Kindergarten Roller Coasters

 An Oldie but Goodie! I'm adding this lesson because it is so great. These are photos from the third day of Kindergarten months ago. This group of Kinders really were super at bending, folding, curling the paper. At the end of class most of that class had color exploding off their paper. So much fun. For more details about this lesson click here  http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7066642072576014944#editor/target=post;postID=7007039604688088204.

Tree of Life-Second Grade Art Lessons

 In Second grade I have always taught a lesson inspired by Gustav Klimt's work. Students learn about the life and work of the artists. We discuss his works, such as The Baby, Tree of Life, The Kiss, Adele Bloch Bower (compare and contrast both of her paintings. Usually we do a lesson on The Baby. However this year I wanted to tackle the painting Tree of Life. 

Because I have two schedules of second grade, one group first nine weeks and the other second nine weeks, I did two different lessons.

The above lesson was inspired for me by another blogger. www.marymaking.blogspot.com. Her examples were beautiful. I just couldn't resist trying it out.

The other lesson below was an idea I put together myself. The background was created with watercolor. 

1. Mixing and making all color families. 2. Black tempera tree with famous Klimt swirls. 3. tropical birds and repeated gold and shiny sequins.

I'm not sure which I like the best. Both really. However I do feel that all students were successful with second lesson. It was simple and didn't require the painting of shapes and dots. 

Which do you think?

Wow what a colorful perched bird.

Mister Seahorse-Art to Remember

In First Grade I always introduce Eric Carle. The kids already have read or listened to his books before and it is so great to say "not only is he an author but is an artist too!" I love the vivid imagery of his animals and his technique of collage. Last year we first grade did the grouchy lady bug for our art fundraiser lesson, so I wanted to switch it up and do seahorses.

This lesson has been done before all over the blogging world! Where I started this lesson with that first class has now greatly changed. With 10 first grade classes this year, I have tweaked this lesson enough that now I like it! These are made with watercolors. 

First day I read the book and we did a drawing lesson of a seahorse. These were traced with sharpie and painted with warm colors. The following class time the background was made of cool colored waves and splashes. While they sat and dried seahorses were cut out and glued on top. Then last green seaweed which added depth and a new color!

I hope on the magnets the colors look okay. Sometimes the watercolor can look lighter???? We will see.

Aztecs Suns-Art to Remember

Every year our school participates in an Art Fundraiser so I can have money to purchase much needed supplies for over 1,000+. We've been back in forth between Art by Me and Art to Remember. Both similar have same programs with similar concepts.

Sometimes lessons are successful and sometimes not. I am always searching for a really great idea I can use for a meaningful lesson. This lesson I actually saw on another blog, and I thought it fitted in perfectly with the third grade curriculum. How can a culture influence the history of Art?

The Aztecs did just that with their ancient Sun stone hundreds of years ago. This idea of putting a face on a sun design, work of art has been going on ever since.

This project took about three class times. Why? I don't know. The students just took forever coloring. We did spend some time the first day looking at the Aztec Sun Stone on the Smart board and learning about these nomadic people.

Warm and Cool colors were reviewed and used as color schemes.