Fancy letters

Although I have a ton of super creative students, there are also those who doubt their creative abilities. I like using name and text-based art as a way to start the year for 2 reasons. First- I need to remember names!! Second- EVERYONE should be able to write their name, and if they can't yet, they need practice. Using letters to make art makes it easy for those who feel like they can't draw, and the beautiful results of seeing their gorgeously colorful names up on the walls makes them feel like they can be good at art too.

 My first graders were given 6x18 inch paper, and after reviewing primary colors and watching the OK!GO! primary color video, they wrote their names across the paper in red, yellow, and blue crayon and then made the letters 'FAT" Kids with long names had a big challenge! Then we painted 2 areas with yellow watercolor, overlapped one with red to get orange, and painted a third area red. Finally a red and a yellow area were overlapped with blue to make purple and green. The final product shows a whole rainbow! The kids love painting- but it stresses me out!! Getting 24 first graders set up, working, and cleaned up for painting makes my hair turn gray.

 My second graders also made name art, partially inspired by zentangles and partially inspired by Jean Dubuffet's abstract shape jumbles. Dubuffet only used stripes to enliven his shapes, but I challenged the second grade to make theirs even more patterned.

 We started by sketching the letters of our name- big at the bottom for a strong foundation for our towers- and smaller as they stacked up to the top of the page. I did a similar project with last year's class, except changed it from random placement of letters to a more vertical stack. Since they are used to a linear arrangement of letters, the vertical stack was far more successful than the random ones. After practicing many patterns on whiteboards, we started filling each letter with a different pattern. They are so vibrant!!

It's nice to get some projects finished up. 2nd graders who finished early got to make a zentangle on a square of paper- some kids made a ton of squares and decided to mount them together on a piece of construction paper. It was very exciting to see them determine their creative process that way!