Kinder Pezzettino drawings

My Kindergartners have been learning about shapes and how they can go together to make pictures. We started off by reading "Pezzettino" by Leo Lionni about a small square who thinks he must be a missing piece of someone else. He goes to all his friends who do daring and wonderful things, but they are all complete. Finally Pezzettino trips and breaks into many tiny pieces and he realizes that he is complete too.

We introduced shapes using the mosaic blocks, and I gave kids a challenge to try to make a sun, a flower, a cat, and finally their own creature out of the shapes. I showed kids how to trace their shapes onto paper to keep their creature since they're not allowed to keep my blocks (oh the silence of 24 kinders tracing blocks!)

The next week we practiced coloring carefully by outlining each shape and coloring it in solid. I went around to each child to ask what their creature could do, and wrote their title on the page in sharpie using the naming style of Lionni. It's not a bunny, it's "One who hops". It's not a snake but "One who slithers".

 Finally for some color and interest in the background we laid squares of bleeding tissue paper over the blank white areas, and I walked around with a spray bottle to make it "rain" on their picture and make magic paint.The kids loved seeing the paint instantly appear on their pages. However, I'm not 100% sold on this technique. It's very messy, and I had some overenthusiastic helpers crumple up a LOT of extra tissue paper into the trash instead of saving it. Luckily I have my intern on Thursdays and a high school helper on Fridays to assist in managing the drying rack traffic.

The students who had clearly made creatures and colored well had more successful results with the tissue. For those who had more random shapes the background color addition jut seemed distracting. Oh well, it was an experiment I'd never tried before, and it was mostly a success.

We have lots more shape things happening in other grades. Our quarter is almost finished and I've got to get kids to finish projects this week!!

The Elements of Art according to 4th grade

Last year I had 4th grade do a hidden name project with lines, colors, and patterns. It took way too long due to using colored pencils and 12x18 paper. So I decided to revamp the project. It's still a hidden word (possibly a name) but this time with an emphasis on the elements of art.

 Students studies the elements through examples on my bulletin board and also through videos on "The Artist's Toolkit". They wrote a short word (name, favorite activity, or some onomatopoeia), then divided the space into 6 sections. Each section was supposed to illustrate or emphasize a different element of art (Line, color, shape, value,pattern, shape).

 We used marker, crayon, or colored pencil on 9x12 paper. Was the project any shorter? NO!!! ARGHH!! I think it's just 4th grade. They're either too chatty and distracted, or on the flip side they're too detailed and slow. I need balance!

For the most part, they finally got it and the resulting abstract works are visually exciting. We've moved on to OP ART, and the kids are loving it.

2nd grade Oaxacan-inspired sculptures

At the beginning of the school year as I unpacked all the goodies in my new art room I could not BELIEVE how many boxes of wood shapes I found, both left over from the previous year and on my hand-me-down supply list from the previous art teacher. I couldn't imagine how so much wood could possibly be used in one year. I put a dent in the boxes with a mobile project I did with 2nd grade early in the year, but now we've nearly demolished the wood supply with our latest project: Oaxacan-inspired wood animal sculptures.

 It's so hard to choose photos to share, because their sculptures all have so much character. We started off by examining examples of Oaxacan wood sculptures- especially how the forms, colors, and markings of the animals were exaggerated from real life. We considered adaptations an animal needs to live in an environment and selected features from known animals to create an imaginary animal. Students drew a sketch of what animal they would like to create to finish off the first art-looking and art-planning day.

 On the second day, we pulled out the wooden shapes and noticed their forms- most of which were in the cylindrical or rectangular prism category. I asked students to pull out pieces and play with the arrangement of forms a bit before deciding how to construct their animal. They were also asked to pay attention to how their pieces connected- the more surface area touching between 2 pieces, the stronger the attachment would be. We used tacky glue for this step because I shouldn't find where I hid the wood glue!

 On the third day I asked students to choose 1-2 colors to paint a base coat on their sculpture. After 3 classes of messily painted sculptures, I limited the 4th class to ONE base color! On the fourth day we looked at the Oaxacan sculptures one more time to remember how they were decorated. This time we used skinny brushes and added pattern details like stripes and polka dots. We thought about how some animals try to blend in to their environments with camouflage colors and some animals have warning colors to show they are poisonous.

On our final work day, students had an opportunity to add some final details with feathers, beads, googly eyes, and sequins. They were asked to be RESTRAINED in their choices and not go overboard with the doodads. They also created a written description and a drawing of their animal in its environment to serve as a label for their sculpture when they go on display. Their written description had to include what animals they combined, three things their sculpture had, and explain how their sculpture was or was not like Oaxacan sculptures
This project is a real winner- students got to work in 3 dimensions and use a lot of creative problem-solving as well as connect to concepts in science.  The process and product are nicely balanced, and the final pieces are amazing!
 PS. For good photos of sculptures, hang a piece of black construction paper so it is half on the wall, half on the table and place the sculpture on top.

Kinder Still-life Drawing

I owe this one to Jessica at "The Art of Education" blog. She posted a year ago about a way to do observational drawing with Kindergartners, which stuck in my memory. She focused on architecture with this lesson, but I wanted to apply it to a different genre. I'm working through units on Genre in art with my K-3rd grades, and introduced my Kinders to still-life this week. I have a bulletin board up right now with various pictures showing different genres, so we did a kinesthetic learning activity where the students showed me with a hand gesture whether a picture showed a person (portrait), place (landscape), or thing (still-life). This made a literacy connection to nouns as well. For the portraits they pointed to their faces, for landscapes they folded hands, and for still-life they pointed to an open hand. I really like these gesture activities as it allows the entire class to show me what they know, instead of just the few who like to raise their hands.

I pulled out the boxes of pattern blocks which usually sit in my free-activity area. I noticed before how many students enjoy tracing the shapes to make a picture, and thought they would be familiar enough with the shapes in order to draw them from observation. I showed them how to build a little still-life out of blocks, then draw what they saw shape by shape.Afterwards we added a "table" line and a "wallpaper" pattern to complete the pictures. Some students really got it. The most advanced one is above, where the child even mirrored the shapes in the shadow!!

 They were not allowed to trace the shapes, so it was a challenge for some. But not tracing meant that there were some kids who drew really big, and some who drew really small. So the pictures look really different, and none look exactly like my exemplar (yay!).

 Lots of my Kinders are just emerging from the scribble stage, and it's hard to get them to color carefully. However, I made this a one day project only, which didn't leave much time for coloring.

 I'm amazed at what Kindergartners can do with a little instruction. These drawings are very different from their everyday free-draw styles. It's also interesting to see in this project which students find drawing more engaging and which ones just want to build with blocks!

Next up we'll try out landscape painting with a little "snowy" inspiration. One class already started, and I CANNOT BELIEVE how quiet a class of Kindergartners can get while painting!!
I have a lot of classes finishing projects this week, so I'll have more to share soon. The Kinders get shorter projects, so I feel like I'm writing more about them than the other grades!

Eric Carle Kinder Collages

After looking at Eric Carle's ABC animal book, Kindergartners learned how to make painted textured papers with spots, stripes, and scratches to prepare for an animal collage project. Then we talked about all the different places animals can live. The kids thought about forests, jungles, grasslands, zoos, oceans, ponds, farms, and even in our houses! They drew a background habitat for their animal first. Then we practiced tearing paper and using our imaginations to make animal shapes from torn paper.Finally, we tore our good painted texture paper to create an animal collage a la Eric Carle.

 One boy was very original and did a penguin who lived in the arctic (we hadn't come up with that one as a group!) I'm not sure if that's a person or another penguin sliding down the iceberg in the background. It looks like he drew some wind to show how cold it was, and even a fish for his penguin to eat!

 You may not have heard of green cows before, but that's what this one is. There's also a chick at the bottom and some birds hanging out on the fence in this farm scene. I think this girl also discovered that coloring big areas goes faster if you use the side of a peeled crayon.

This one is a very big tiger hanging out by a stream.
This project had great diversity in the finished pictures. The kids had a lot of choice, and were really able to envision animal shapes from their torn paper. It was remarkable to see how much they already knew about animals and habitat as they did this project. Animal drawings seem more developed at this age than people drawings. I wonder why that is. All four of my Kindergarten classes went at this in different ways. Some felt anxious about trying to tear a specific shape and wasted a lot of time, while another class finished the background and collage zippity-zip in one session. Our next project is going to build off the shapes idea for a quick "still-life" drawing.