Mittens!

This is a great art project to go along with the Ukrainian folktale, The Mitten by Jan Brett.  We read the story together and discussed why the story is considered a folktale and what happened in the story that is unrealistic.  Students were give blue paper and white colored pencils to fill their paper with snowflakes of different sizes and varieties.  Next, students traced their hands in the shape of a mitten and added lines, shapes, and colors.  Lastly, for some fun detail we added a yarn string and a giant die-cut snowflake and some glitter!

Winter Villages

This is a great seasonal art lesson, perfect for grades K-3. To begin, we read the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and we discussed some of the similarities between the character's snow day and our snow days.  Next, students wrote about their favorite thing to do on a snow day.  We used gray paper for this project because the long winter days in the Mid West are filled with mostly gray skies.  To begin, I demonstrated drawing houses using basic shapes.  We colored the houses with regular Crayola crayons and used a lot of pressure while coloring so the colors would look as bright as possible on the dark paper.  Next, we tore white paper to create the texture of fluffy snow.  The torn paper was glued under the houses and between the houses to create depth.  Lastly, we used white paint add snow on the top of the houses, trees, chimneys, and in the sky!  The students did a great job on this project, and it looks even better with iridescent glitter sprinkled on the top!

Art + Language Arts

This is a great lesson to do with 1st graders! Pick a story and have them sequence it illustrate it! We divided our papers into four sections, labeled them 1, 2, 3, 4, and drew what happened 1st, 2nd, and so on. This was a great story about kindness and treating people with respect, even if they're different than you. 

Miro Drawings

     Drawing to music in the style of Miro! This lesson went flawlessly. There's something magical that happens when you combine music with art. Before the lesson, I demonstrated how to draw lines and shapes which represent the music...large shapes when the music is loud, small soft lines and shapes when the music is soft. For this lesson I added in some 'silly people' like you would see in Miro's paintings. I feel like 1st graders would be able to relate to the silly, whimsical figures. To give the drawings a real 'painterly' effect, we painted water over the marker lines. To add color, we used crayons and watercolors for the background. I'll post a finished painting soon! 
Oh....before we began, I showed this AMAZING Eric Carle video on You Tube called I See A Song.  Where has this video been all my life (ok, a bit dramatic! Lol!).  

Winter Houses

This is a cute lesson to do with primary classes. We watched an old Norwegian folk tale about the North Wind on You Tube before starting the project. Each student got a different background color on which they used a variety of colored construction paper to create their houses. The fun part was stamping the snow dots on their art at the end!  These will look great on display and brighten our hallway for the remainder of this dreary winter season. 

Reflection Paintings

This was a fun but exhausting project with my 1st graders. We did Reflection Paintings today using construction paper houses and painting the reflection with watercolors. We should have started with a 1-media project for the 2nd week of school but that's not how I roll. I dive right in! Ha-ha! The kids did a great job, however. There were a few water cup spills and a few kids painting on each other, but all-in-all the paintings turned out great and will look FAB hanging up in the hallway! 

Fork Printing Tulips

What a great project for spring! My kids loved this! We first drew the background and colored it with crayons. Next, we painted the stems and leaves. Then, we used forks to stamp the tulips on each stem. It's the time of year for fluorescent paint!!! I usually save the "fun" supplies for the end of the year when kids need a little more motivation and excitement in the school day. Lol. Here are some kindergarten samples:

Crazy Hair Paintings

Let me begin by saying, I LOVE my student teacher! She's just the breath of fresh air that I needed. This is a project that she decided to teach to my 3rd graders. First, students drew a portrait of themselves and colored it. Next, they used watered-down tempera paint to put along their hairline so they could blow the paint in different directions using a straw. We had small cups of the tempera on each table and a brush for each color. We instructed the students to take one 'scoop' of paint and blow it then select another color of paint and blow it again. How fun! You should definately try this project!

1st Grade Tooth Fairy Paintings

     I cannot handle the level of cuteness in this project!  First, we listened to a story about the tooth fairy on YouTube.  In fact, this is a great tool to use on any project.  You can find a read-aloud story for kids on just about any subject you are teaching and they are usually 5 minutes or less.  This is a great way to introduce your topic and get the kids excited about the project.  Ok, after the video, we drew the tooth fairy together, colored in her wings white and added white sparkle X's to the background, colored in her dress and body, and then used silver, white & blue liquid watercolors to paint over the entire paper.  Lastly, the kids added glue to her wings and I sprinkled glitter on them for that magical fairy effect :-)

     When they were finished, we wrote letters to the tooth fairy.  You will LOVE reading these!

Wow City!!

      I found this book on Pinterest and asked my librarian to track it down for me.  I like it because it is visually stimulating.  The author is actually an illustrator who decided to write a book after he took his 2-year old daughter to the city for the first time.

      I used this book with my K-3 classes but changed the medium according to grade level.  For example, these are examples of glue-line relief drawings using chalk pastels.  K&1 classes used Crayola oil pastels to add color to their drawings.  The first class, we drew the city using the concept of overlapping buildings.  I showed them how to draw buildings in the foreground and add buildings that look like they are behind the other buildings.  Some little ones got this, and some didn't.  It is a more advanced thinking skill for little artists, but I figure I may as well introduce the concept early so they might remember it when they are ready to manipulate the skill.  Here are some stellar examples:

By Krystal

By Rachel

Kindergarten Giraffes

I showed this video to my kinders yesterday regarding the African landscape, climate, & animals.  (I actually have a student who just moved here from Africa, so that was pretty cool.)

   We named all of the different animals that we saw in the video (although I have to admit...there were a few horned creatures that I didn't know the name of, so I called them 'antelope'...ooops). 

     Then, we started our giraffe project.  This was quite an undertaking for kinders.  We had to draw the giraffe, cut it out, tear brown paper for the spots, make a moon, & cut the grass.  I think they turned out very well.  The lesson actually came from Patti over at Deep Space Sparkle.  My teacher friend had downloaded one of Patti's units on African Themed Art Lessons and gave me a copy.  Thanks Patti!  Here is a link to her blog:  http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2010/12/african-art-lessons-plans/
Purchasing her lesson plans is definitely worth the $$. 

     Here are a few of our torn-paper giraffes:

 Penda's Giraffe

 Chase's Giraffe

 Jared's Giraffe

Corey's Giraffe

Musical Animals

Well, there comes a point in every Art teacher's lesson plans when you need to change things and mix them up either because it's simply not working, or you've become bored teaching the same thing over and over.  The latter is my case today, yesterday, and always.  We are still working on our Picture the Music artwork in conjunction with the St. Louis Symphony.  We are still comparing and contrasting music to the visual arts based on emotion and color.  But, I needed to add a splash of whimsy.  So, for my 2nd graders today, we are doing Musical Animals.  Kids LOVE animals, don't they?  To relate this theme with my music objective, we will talk about repetition in music and art.  Here are some of our masterpieces:

 Amauria's horses

 Caitlin's elephants

 Kamauri's butterflies

 Alan's Lions

Jordan's butterflies