1st Grade: Winter Landscapes with Depth

My 1st graders finished up these awesome winter landscapes right before we left for the winter break.  I really like introducing the concept of depth to 1st grade because I think they can actually understand it and work with it in simpler forms.  In the past, I've done pumpkin landscapes with depth and a Northern Lights landscape, so I decided to combine the two for this year's depth landscape!

This project took two days and about 10 minutes in a third class to complete.  On the first day, I showed students a video about how the Northern Lights are created (of which this fits really well into their Common Core Listening & Learning strand about Astronomy!).  We then got down to work drawing our landscape out.

Students used black oil pastel on black paper.  I first asked them to draw a big snowman, just the body, towards the bottom edge of their paper, and then a horizon line behind it.  I posed the question, "If you wanted to draw a snowman in the background, how would you do it?"  Most of them understood that it had to be drawn smaller, but I showed them how to draw it smaller and farther up on their paper.  Again, I had them draw a horizon line behind that snowman.  Then, I asked, "What if you wanted to draw a snowman in between those two snowmen? In the middle-ground?" It was like a light-bulk turned on above their heads! 

We added the mountains next, and then used three colors to create the Northern lights in the sky.  This all happened on day 1.

On day 2, we talked about how we were going to color all the snow.  If snowmen are white, and the snow on the ground is white, I explained that they would have to do something a little different to the snow so they wouldn't blend together.  Luckily, there was snow on the ground outside the windows so we could look at how the shadows from the building look blue in the snow!

After the snow was colored, the mountains and the details on the snowmen were the last things left!

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 2

Here they are...our finished crazy pumpkin collages!

Some students elected to add crazy eyes and mouths to their pumpkins to create jack-o-lanterns while others decided to keep them simple pumpkins.  To finish up the collages, I passed out white drawing paper scraps for students to create eyes, mouths and as some did, moons to add to their collages.  I passed out a piece of brown art paper for them to make stems.  Once these were all glued on, students added a few more blades of grass from their green paper scraps and they were all finished!

3rd Grade: Georgia O'Keeffe Landscapes

Ok, this is a project that I have been waiting AN ENTIRE YEAR to do!  I saw it on my blog roll via Painted Paper while I was in the middle of my usual fall birch tree paintings with 3rd grade.  I usually do a fall, winter, and spring birch tree project with that level in order to teach depth in a landscape but I wanted to change it up a bit this year.  I really love the birch trees but I am actually getting tired of doing them so I switched to this project for the fall landscape.  What's great is that it only took us two class periods to complete these, whereas the birch tree paintings take 3-4, and when you only see the students once every six days, that's a lot of time to stretch out a project.

This is also an awesome project to do because I live in Northern New York, not very far from Lake George where Georgia O'Keeffe painted these!  Many of my students have been there on vacation so it was a way for them to connect to O'Keeffe and the project we were doing.

I basically took the directions for this project verbatim from Painted Paper.  After I presented Georgia O'Keeffe using a power point, we discussed depth and how to make things look farther away or closer to you in a painting.  On that same day, we painted the sky first using light blue paint and we dabbed white in to make clouds.  Next, we left a space and painted the water using dark blue.  I showed students how to streak in white and black to give the illusion of light reflecting off the lake.  Lastly, we added mountains in between the water and sky using brown and a little bit of black paint.

On the second day, we talked about depth again.  We looked at O'Keeffe's fall landscape again and then observed the trees outside the classroom, noticing the difference in details that can be seen in the trees right outside the window versus across the street.  I demonstrated how to dab the yellow and red paint together to create fall trees (also a quick review on primary and secondary colors!).  Some students chose to add a thin line of trees at the base of the mountain.  Once they finished the trees, I had them get a skinny paint brush to add tree trunks and branches to the foreground trees.

My example, from start to finish.

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 1

Once again, I'm changing it up this year for 1st grade.  This year's group of kinders and 1st graders are a bit lower developmentally and behaviorally than in the past, so I have to start a bit simpler this year.  For our first project in 1st grade, we are reviewing basic color theory (primary and secondary colors) as well as talking about what a landscape is.  To tie it into the fall season, we are incorporating pumpkins!

This project has turned into a three day project.  It probably could have been squeezed into two, but the students were actually taking their time to cut and glue the pieces that I didn't want to rush them!  Here is what we did in the first two days.

On day one, we reviewed the primary and secondary colors.  They learned this in the beginning of kindergarten last year and periodically reviewed it through the year.  Each student received three pieces of Manila tag board and wrote their names on the back.  I held up yellow and blue paint, asked the students to share at their tables what color they thought those would make when mixed, and then went around to each student and put a squirt of each color on their paper.

The students then had to mix the paint on their paper while painting the entire thing.  This was also a great review right out of the gate on how to paint properly with tempera paint...no banging the brushes on the side of the water container (wipe on a tissue or paper towel), periodically dip your brush in water to help make the paint spread easier on the paper, etc. etc.  We repeated this until we had painted an orange, purple and green paper.

Purple is always a hard color to mix.  I found that when the students used the fluorescent blue and red, the purple was really pink, which you can see in the pictures below.  With another class, I gave the fluorescent red and regular blue tempera and the purple turned out darker, like my purple in the picture above.

On the second day, I demonstrated how to cut thin, tall rectangles out of the green paper to make grass.  I had students glue a row of grass onto the purple paper.  Next, I asked them to cut out a small, medium and large pumpkin out of the orange paper.  We discussed a little bit about how pumpkins can be different shapes...not always perfect circles...to ease their minds about not being able to cut a perfect circle.  We glued these on next.  (If I had more time with the students and had thought about it sooner, I would have incorporated the book, Spookley the Square Pumpkin...it's a super cute book and there is even a cute, video version of the book.)

Lastly, I asked students to cut out more grass and I showed them how to put grass on top of the pumpkins and behind them to make it look like the pumpkins are sitting in tall grass.

I don't usually start the first project of the year in 1st grade with paint, but I must say that I am extremely happy with the results so far.  This project doesn't require detailed painting so it's a great way to review how to paint with tempera from last year (no banging brushes, swish to rinse, no bad hair days, etc.).  It's also an awesome review for scissor safety and for using dots of glue instead of globs. :)

Lots of students asked to be able to put eyes and a mouth on their pumpkins.  Since 99% of the school population in my district does participate in Halloween events, I can and will allow it.  I won't require it however, in case someone doesn't celebrate Halloween or simply does not want to add eyes and a mouth.  I even had a student ask if he could make the eyes on his pumpkin yellow so that it looked like a glowing jack-o-lantern!

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!