First Grade Writing with Mondrian Art

Mrs. Percival's first grade class has been learning about writing using a four square writing graphic organizer. After each art class, she returns to the classroom and the children write about their art project using this format. First, they planned the writing project by writing the topic in the middle of the planning sheet and then writing four different supporting items in each of the squares. In this student examples, each student wrote about a diagonal line, horizontal lines, vertical lines, and the three primary colors. Once they planned the writing, they wrote a paragraph based upon the details in the graphic organizer. This is a great basic writing format and teaches expository writing according to the first grade Common Core. This becomes an authentic writing experience because the children are writing about something they made. It builds vocabulary and teaches basic sentence structure as well as how to write a paragraph.

Above: Jocelyn first created the artwork, then she wrote about it using a four square graphic organizer to help structure her writing.

This is a close-up of Andee's planning sheet.

This project teaching Common Core Standards:

Grade 1: ELA.W.2 (English Language Arts Informative/explanative texts which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic and provide some sense of closure.

2nd Grade Fall Windy Day Art

The art lesson this week was really fun! We studied the paintings of Van Gogh and learned how about how great artists create movement in their artwork. We also studied how plants and animals get ready for a change in seasons and we studied a little bit about weather as we created windy day pictures showing plants an animals preparing for cold days ahead. To start this lesson we created leaf rubbings and then we wrote a sentence/poem our leaf. Then we talked about the change of seasons and how some animals migrate, some adapt and some hibernate. We learned about the life cycle of plants and why trees lose their leaves for the winter months. Finally, we got to talk about weather!

You will notice in our pictures that the house and trees are bending to the wind. We used a sharpie to draw trees in the style of Gustav Klimt. Then we added a house that was leaning in the wind, animals getting ready for winter and some leaves blowing in the wind. We colored our pictures and then we used crayons to create movement in the background. Finally, we added a watercolor wash of grey paint to make create a stormy, cold day!

Red Fox and a Yellow Box - First Grade Art

Rhyming Words: The Big Blue Ox, A Red Fox and a Yellow Box

This year in art we have been focusing on art that reinforces stories in our basal reader. As part of our new focus, we are attempting to do sketchbook activities as part of every first grade lesson! This has been quite a new adventure, but the children are doing wonderfully well and are having a lot of fun drawing in their sketchbooks and writing words to go with the lessons.

For our FOX lesson, I selected an illustration from the story and we studied the picture to look for basic shapes. The theme for art this year is "Look and then Draw!" I am trying to teach the children to study the world around them and observe it before they draw. To reinforce this principle, every child was given a small picture of the mama fox and baby to glue in their sketch book. Before starting, I showed them how to draw a little symbolic fox starting with a letter "V". I explained the difference between drawing symbolic art, and drawing art that looks real. Then we looked at the picture in their sketchbook and tried to draw the fox using our EYES instead of our brain! The children drew while I talked them through it! I was personally amazed at the quality of illustrations from the first grade children. They loved this project even though it was difficult.

Observational Art: After we drew in our sketchbook, we created a larger picture using oil pastels. We tried to add texture to our pictures using different colors for our fox and blending them. Then we also added grass to our pictures, also blending two different colors.

The next week, our story was about a bird nest, so we decided to create eggs in the style of Piet Mondrian. We are working on rhyming words, so we reminded the children that the YELLOW BOX in this picture, rhymes with FOX and OX from previous lessons.

Mrs. Peterson created this writing assignment to extend the art project and shared it with other teachers at East Elementary. This year, our main focus in art is to improve the English Language Arts, so we are focusing on writing, vocabulary building, speech and language skills as well as visual art. This can get challenging, so we really appreciate it when the teacher goes the extra mile to reinforce the literary concept back in the classroom!

We had fun creating beautiful art with simple black lines and spots of brilliant color in the style of Piet Mondrian.

Miss Eberhard's class created these Mondrian inspired eggs.

Color Wheel Week

It is color wheel week! We are having fun playing with mixing color. The kindergarten classes are making color wheels from Play-doh and the first grade classes are creating swirling clouds of color with powdered paint and ice cubes! There is always that thrilling moment when the children start to mix the colors and a new color appears like magic! This is fun for children of all ages.

The first grade classes made this little hurricane color wheel using powdered paint and ice cubes. I saw this idea at an art conference four years ago, but I had never tried it until now. I will definitely do this again. It was fun for the children and it was a great science experiment for them. The children learned problem solving techniques as well as cause and effect. To start, we gave each child 3 little piles of paint in the primary colors. This color wheel was mixed using an ice cube with a popsicle stick frozen into it. As the ice cube started to melt, it was just wet enough to mix the paint. We tried this many different ways, and the best way was to just start with yellow, pretending that there was a little hurricane that gradually moved over to to the red, then gradually moved over to the blue and then back again to the yellow. The best color wheels were made fairly quickly, without stopping. If the ice cube melts too quickly it just makes a big mess. If the child tries to clean off the ice cube between colors, it seemed to cause more problems because they lost "the flow" of the project. Ideally, each child will create a color wheel with 6 colors... starting with yellow, moving to orange, red, purple, blue and then green! This was fabulously fun! I like to do it over and over again just to play with the colors and see the magic happen before my eyes.

We tied this project in with a story about a big blue OX. The next week we drew a red FOX and then we created a yellow BOX creating art with all three primary colors, but still reinforcing rhyming words and focusing on literacy. All of our are lessons this year are tying into basal reading stories and reinforcing elements of the English Language Arts Common Core as well as science, social studies and math whenever possible.

Here are a few finished color wheels.

The children are so proud of their work!

Here, the kindergarten children are showing off their little play-dough color wheels. This is a favorite project. We read "White Rabbits Color Book" before we mixed our color wheels. Again, we just used the 3 primary colors to create all the colors on the color wheel. The kindergarten children were especially delighted as they saw new colors appear before their eyes!

Constellations, Wild Things and Pattern Cats

We are back to school and having fun with our artwork!

The 2nd graders have been studying space and they have been creating these beautiful constellation pictures based on the book Zoo in the Sky published by the National Geographic Society.

This first picture is a lovely bird of paradise floating in the sky.

Here we have Draco...

And finally the lovely swan, Cygnus.

This has to be one of my all-time favorite art projects. Every one is so beautiful!

For a copy of my lesson plan follow the following link:

http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=27205

While the 2nd graders were busy creating constellations, the 1st graders were learning how to draw cats with basic shapes. This art project was based on the first story in our basal reader, Sam Come Back! Once we finished drawing our cats, we added pattern! The cute little mouse was a creative touch!

... And the Kindergartner's were having the most fun of all! We read the favorite story, Where the Wild Things Are, and then we created our very own Wild Thing pictures!

End of year projects... Part Four

During the last weeks of school, I try to give the teachers a lot of different ideas for the final art projects of the year. I adapt each lesson to fit what the teacher needs, and many teachers selected different art projects. All of the art projects tied in with either the science, social studies or language arts core. Mrs. Purdy's 3rd grade class learned how to do a very creative art technique adapted from the Zentangle Teacher Training class I attended in Massachusetts. For this fun art lesson, we used large paper and markers. First we just wrote our name using our very best handwriting, then we added an aura around our name and finally we learned how to create "Mooka" ... a free flowing tangle pattern. Simply beautiful! The children had a lot of fun with this project.
Ms. Jacobson's class learned about the Aztec Indians and created beautiful foil masks using silver foil and wooden sticks to draw the designs. The children added a variety of pattern and texture to their masks. Once finished, we carefully cut the mask out and mounted it on heavy cardstock.
Mrs. Bostick's 3rd grade class did a similar project, but they chose to focus on butterflies. We studied the beautiful symmetry of the butterfly and looked at actual photographs of butterflies. Each child sketched a butterfly in their sketchbook and they traced it lightly onto the foil. Then they added pattern and design to their butterflies, cut them out and mounted them are heavy cardboard. Some children painted their butterflies with watercolor paint.

End of year projects... Part Three

We have been learning to sketch in 2nd grade art, but most of the time our sketches are pretty simple. During the last week of school, Mrs. Marx's 2nd grade class came to art and we decided to sketch a photograph of a clownfish. We started by drawing the contour edge to get the basic shape, then we added structure lines and finally we added pattern and shading! These are amazing sketches!