First Grade Cities

After returning from a trip to NYC in January I did this project with my first graders. The straight lines for the buildings were printed with cards and black tempra. The following art time lines were drawn with oil pastel and then a water color wash. This project really lasted three 40 minute classes.

Kindergarten Initial Paintings

Great 2 day lesson on the letter recognition, shapes, lines, and intro to painting.

This lesson I have actually borrowed from the teacher I student taught with over 10 years ago. I haven't done it in a long time and thought it would be a great one for my kindergartners this year.

It is a great lesson to introduce painting. We discuss so many things with lesson such as how to hold a paint brush, how to wipe the brush, how to get paint and carry it back to their seats (see photo at bottom on how I set up paint in room), how to carry a wet painting to the drying rack, etc. Also we practice lines, shapes, and I introduce the concept of outlining. So many times kids first start painting the inside the of the shape first. Outlining keeps the shape of the letter and helps students to stay inside the lines of the shape.

This lesson is a little time consuming for me because I draw their initial first before hand in pencil. To start the lesson I ask them why do they think they have that particular letter. Then we talk about what an initial is.

First day:

We discuss all the basics with the brush, paint, etc. This takes a while.

out line and paint the letter one color. Then they can pick a line for the top and another for the bottom of the paper. I have the lines written on the board.

Second Day:

when they walk in the room I give them a card with one shape on it. We used triangles, circles, squares, ovals, and rectangles. We talked about the shapes and how they would use their shape five times in their letter, and the shape had to be the same size as the their shape in the card. Very helpful because they usually paint either super large or too small and would fill their letter with a thousand shapes.

They outlines their letter with another color. If their letter was a light color they needed to use a dark color for their outline. If the letter was a dark color they needed to use to use a light color for the outline. This adds contrast. Some got that concept, some did not.

Then they could use additional lines across the paper going behind the letter.

Student chose one color at a time. They pick it up behind the magic line and put it back behind the magic line. This picture is from last year. This year the table is in the middle of the room and the line and paints go all the way around the table.

Roy G Biv, Roller Coasters and Shapes

These are a few art lessons we have done this nine weeks in Kindergarten. All have been successful.

Lesson: Roy G Biv
Objectives:

• Student's will learn about the spectrum colors (rainbow) and their order.
• student's will each create their own ROY G BIV.
• Student's will understand and Follow a step by step presentation of the activity using the document camera.
• They will use art tools safely and appropriately. Scissors and glue (just a dot not a lot)
• Learn how to carry their art work to drying rack.

Supplies

• 12x18 white paper
• tan paper with circle traced on it
• Strips of spectrum colors
• glue
• scissors
• ROY G BIV name tags
• CD by Greg percy "ROY G BIV"
• Markers

This is a one day lesson. My class time is 40 minutes. I am booking it to get finished. I thought about taking the song out, but it is so cute. A great way to teach a concept!

1. Introduce colors in the rainbow and ROY G BIV. Explain the he lives in a rainbow and sometimes we see him in our and other works of art.
2. Sing song by Greg Percy "ROY G BIV"
3. Demonstrate how cut circle from tan paper and where to glue it on white paper. Also demonstrate where to glue his ears.
4. Discuss the order of the spectrum colors and demonstrate how to glue to rainbow colors as his hair.
5. name tag goes at bottom or somewhere
6. Demonstrate how to draw his face with a great big smile!

Closure: review names of spectrum colors.

The Roy G Biv lesson above I borrowed from a kindergarten teachers blog. I did this lesson after the roller coaster and shape lesson. Super cute.

This roller coaster lesson is an all time must for kindergarten. I've been doing this for years. This is usually my third lesson with kindergarten, after an introduction to line. It is a great lesson to teach how to open, use and close a glue bottle. The total lesson can be found in last years post.

"Castle and Sun' This lesson came after the roller coaster lesson. I wanted to continue with using the glue bottle and introduce cutting in art. I showed the students Paul Klee's "Castle and Sun" and we discussed the shapes he used in his castle.

I had rectangles, squares, triangles pre cut for them to sort through and build their own castle. Building from the bottom up was a hard concept for most. They orignally wanted to slap shapes on their paper just anywhere. I had to really encourage them to build.

The last thing they did was cut a circle drawn for them on an orange sheet of paper. I walked around the room and really just watched who could cut.

I really need to post more of these. I was really inpressed with alot.

I am going to do this lesson next nine weeks again with my other set of Kindergarteners and may chose a different color background and incorporate some different kinds of paper. ie scrap book, painted paper, etc.