Sixth Grade Cave Paintings

My sixth graders have just finished up their first project, which was, of course, cave art!  When talking about curriculum for my elementary grade levels, sixth grade and kindergarten are really the only two levels where my projects tend to remain the same each year, and it really doesn't bother me either!  (Ask me about my high school curriculum?  It's ALWAYS changing!)

Don't get me wrong, I have yet to do cave paintings the same way more than once, but the premise is there.  This year, students received a huge piece of brown kraft paper.  We tore off the edges, crinkled up the paper, and then took it outside to create our rocks.  We used neutral chalk pastels to rub over the crinkled paper, and then used a paper towel to rub and blend the pastels together.

I HIGHLY suggest doing this process outside, as the chalk pastels tend to get really dusty.  Interested in seeing a previous years technique for creating our rocks?  We have used tempera on tag board in the past as well.

Now, here comes the fun part, where I kind of changed it up for my students a bit.  Once again, we did make our own egg yolk tempera paint.  If you're interested in seeing specifically how I do it with them, you can check out one of my blog posts from a previous year here.  Here's the adaption for this project from this year!  I did the best I could to turn my room into a cave!!  I pulled the blinds, covered up the cracks with black paper, and did my best to turn it into complete darkness.  Then?  I put a bon fire on my smartboard as their light source for painting!

These pictures aren't that great at showing how dark it was, but it was dark enough!  It was a bit comical too, as students started complaining that there was too much light coming through the windows and that this wouldn't work, but once all the lights were off and they had to work with just the fire out the smartboard, they found it was pretty difficult to see to paint accurately.

This was a super great experience for them and I definitely plan on incorporating the bon fire next year as well!  There was a lot of conversation about the actual project and the way they were painting.  Many noticed that their paintings got a bit better as their eyes adjusted to the darkness.

As for the bon fire video, it's pretty easy to find them on YouTube!  The video I used was actually an 8 hour video of a bonfire.  This is the specific video I used below.  It's nice and quiet, nothing distracting in the background...just the calming sounds of a bon fire crackling away!

 My goal next year is to actually use real charcoal, dirt and berries to create the paint.  I never seem to plan well enough in advance but I will next year!!

1st Grade: Northern Lights

One of the NYS Listening & Learning strands for 1st grade is Astronomy, so I wanted to find a cool art project that I could do with my 1st graders.  I thought about doing a Starry Night-esque painting using constellations, but I thought that would be a little above my students, no matter how much I simplified it.  Despite the simple steps I broke this project down into, it literally took us almost four complete classes to do this...i.e. an entire month!  Needless to say, my 1st grade classes this year are rambunctious!  

Anyways, I found the idea for this project floating around on Pinterest...the link took me to the blog Fun Art 4 Kids, where I pretty much used the process there word for word.  The original poster used this with 6th graders whereas I used it with 1st graders.  I think the project was still successful and probably would have been even more successful if they listened to directions a little better.

On the first day, we drew our mountains on manila tag board and then cut them out.  Unbelievably, this took an ENTIRE class period because students weren't listening.  I had to approve of their mountain line before I let them cut, and they had to cut them out in one piece (so they essentially ended up with two sets of mountains). Students started cutting before I was able to get to them to approve their design...and cut their mountains into four pieces, or did it vertically instead of horizontally, or made them really small...the list is endless.

After we passed that mountain (haha!), we talked about analogous colors on the color wheel and painted our watercolor paper.  Again, many students didn't follow directions when told they had to choose three analogous colors to paint their paper.  During the painting process, I asked them to sprinkle the salt onto their paper.  This was a disaster.  I learned real quick it was better for me to sprinkle the salt as they painted their paper.  They either painted too slow and the paint dried before they sprinkled the salt, or they painted, sprinkled salt, and painted over the top of the salt.  Eventually, I decided to sprinkle the salt and once I did, they weren't allowed to paint in that spot again.

On the third day, we did the lights in the sky.  We took the mountain patterns that we made and choose the biggest (tallest) mountain and laid it on the black paper.  Students had to take three different colors of chalk pastels and draw lines from the mountains up to the top of their paper. Then, we took a tissue and wiped the chalk in the same direction to blend the colors (without making too much of a mess on our hands).  I found that it was a little difficult for the younger students to hold the pattern in place while coloring, so I went around and put paper clips on theirs to help them hold it in place.

On the last day, we traced our mountain patterns on the watercolor paper that was painted on day 2.  Again, they had to cut the mountains out in one piece.  Students took the biggest mountain and glued it in place on their background.  I then asked students to trade their small mountain range with another student.  You WOULD NOT BELIEVE the number of students who were unhappy about this!!!  Usually, they are always giving each other their free draws and swapping, trying to help each other out and draw on each other's work.  When I asked them to switch, I had one boy who almost had a complete break down!

The last step on day 4 was to add the constellations.  This was my addition to the original project and was the big connection to their listening and learning strand.  I handed out a constellation sheet that I found on the internet and we quickly went over what each constellation represented (big dipper, little dipper, Orion, etc.) and how they could tell which constellation was what.  Students simply used white chalk to add the constellations.

So, after all of that, here are our finished projects!