2nd Grade: Imperial China Still Life Paintings

For 2nd grade's second project of the school year, they learned about Imperial China and the origins of blue glaze.  This corresponded with the NYS Common Core Listening & Learning Strand of Early Asian Civilizations, so it was a perfect lesson to use!

I did this project two years ago and pulled it out of storage for this group.  Unfortunately, I have yet to receive my clay that I ordered (it was never ordered by my business office over summer...luckily they were still able to get it for me though!), otherwise I would have actually done real pottery and blue glaze with the students.

This project essentially took us 2 1/2 days to complete.  Students received about 15 minutes to finish up their castle collages and then I showed them a power point about Imperial China.  Students went back to their tables, chose a vase to trace, and then drew their vase design on it.  During the power point, I stressed the importance of nature on their pottery, which the students were then able to connect to their religion, which was an A+ in my book on connecting to that Common Core!  Students were supposed to create a design that included nature and decorative patterns, just like the pictures of the vases we looked at in the power point.

On the second day, I taught students about tints and shades.  I gave each table an egg carton with blue, white and black paint and then let them go to town mixing colors to paint their vases.

On the last day, students cut out their vase.  They cut a piece of construction paper in half hot dog style and glued it to the bottom of colored tag board.  We talked about placement of the vase and glued that into place, leaving plenty of room to paint flowers.  I stressed that the vase should NOT sit directly on the horizon line, but also not directly on the bottom of their paper.  Finally, I gave students colored tempera to paint their flowers.

Now, here's my reflection on this project.  The original vase drawings and designs were very good.  They were all nature related, had some great dragons drawn, etc.  However, when it came to painting those finely drawn details, the students struggled.  That's something I'll keep in my for future painting projects to try and teach more in depth.

I just wanted to share these other two paintings...One 2nd grade class had the third day of the project taught to them by a non-art certified substitute teacher...a sub that is very on top of things with the students.  All of the other paintings above came from the other 2nd grade class, taught the last class by myself.  ALL of the still life paintings (except for maybe 4 of them) from the first 2nd grade class had flowers painted like these two...flowers painted around the vase instead of like they are in the vase.  I used the same examples when I taught the class as what I left the substitute.  It will be interesting to see if this trend of understanding continues as the year continues!