1st grade bouquets

My first graders have just finished some beautiful still-life bouquets. We started by looking at a sunflower still-life by Vincent Van Gogh, but noted that it was a little plain looking- the colors were all similar, the vase was simple, and the background was very plain. I thought it would be more fun to add pattern to our still-life project.

 We started by making a symmetrical vase. Students chose either orange or yellow construction paper, folded it in half "hotdog style", and drew a wavy line that started and ended on the fold. After cutting it out they opened it up and discovered some very interesting shapes. It's fun to see how different all the vases turned out! I told the kids to pretend they were potters who had to glaze their vase, and they added lots of colors and patterns in crayon.

 Next we made our table and wallpaper backgrounds. We looked at the wood grain on our classroom tables and tried to copy the swirls and knots of the wood. Some students chose to make a tablecloth pattern instead. When the background was finished, we glued the vases down, trying to leave enough room for the bouquet. Guess what? Glue stick doesn't really stick to crayon! After my first class glue stick failure, the others used elmers and dot,dot, not alotted. Some interesting composition problems occurred along the way. One student, below, had drawn a table with the paper in horizontal format, but had a super tall vase. So she cut it in half and had 2 bowls instead!

 Finally, it was time to print our flowers. We used large and small wooden spools as stamps with red and yellow tempera paint. It's interesting to see how different their flowers all look depending on how they printed the flowers. Some look more like daisies, others like hydrangea. Some just made on flower per stem they drew, others made a cloud of flowers.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. Even though this project seemed very straightforward, it still lots of little opportunities for students to make artistic choices. It also had a lot of review of art element concepts from the beginning of the year (line type, pattern, primary colors, cutting and gluing technique).

Next up we're having a review of genres. We've done a landscape, a portrait, and a still-life, and so as a review we're going to do a collaborative "1st grade museum".