Kindergarten: Rainy Day Self-Portraits

Well, it's a dreary day of rain in Northern New York today, accompanied by Day 2 of DDI Camp.  That's Data Driven Instruction for those of you who may have not been forced to use it yet!  The concept behind it is understandable, but try to get two art teachers from different schools to meet for the first time and to agree on content to cover in their classes by the 10 week, 20 week and 30 week mark?  Ha, yeah right!

So, since it's a rainy day today, I'll leave you with my kinder's last project of the school year.  In alignment with their NYS Listening & Learning strand of "Seasons and Weather", we did these spring time portraits.  We discussed what the weather is like in spring (lots of rain!), what happens with the trees and flowers (they start to get leaves and bud!), and what a self-portrait is.

I took a different route with the kinder's for this project when demonstrating how to draw their body.  Usually, like with my pattern cow project, I would demonstrate one step at a time and have the kids do the step on their own paper before moving to the next.  This time, I demonstrated how to draw the umbrella and then had them do the umbrella.  Next, I showed them how to draw their entire body, starting with their head, the neck, their shoulders and arms, torso, legs and feet.  Then, I let them go to town!

We put in a horizon line (always important and something I stress!) and added good details for spring time.  This all happened in one class period.  The only thing I didn't allow them to do was color the sky, which is usually against the rules!

On the second day of the project, I gave each student a straw and we went over proper straw etiquette (no spitting at others, if you drop it on the floor get a new one, etc.).  I had the students turn their papers upside down and I then went around to the best "Mona Lisas" and gave them a few drops of blue ink on their paper.  Students blew through the straw to make the ink run and look like rain!  Once they were done with the blue, they received a few drops of turquoise, rinse, repeat and done!

Spring/Summer Birch Trees

Here's our last 3rd grade birch tree project.  For this one I didn't give them any directions, other than it had to be a spring/summer landscape with birch trees!  This was like the "test" birch tree project, since we didn't review depth before starting.  I don't have any watercolor pencils, but I decided to let the kids use regular colored pencils if they wanted instead of crayon.  They worked pretty well!  If you haven't already seen them, here are all of our other birch trees from this year:

Fall Birch Trees (Students received full instruction and demonstration.)

Winter Birch Trees  (Students received review of depth.)

I wish some of the students paid more attention!  I had a few really great landscapes that had blank birch trees!

Frogs!

Since 1st graders finished up their Monet ponds not too long ago, and they are actually learning about frogs right now, it only seemed apt that I do a frog project with them!  This is one of those projects that I have found to be very successful and I have done it every year since I started teaching (with little tweaks here and there of course).

This project only takes about three days to do.  I don't present a power point about frogs, but we do talk about what they know about frogs from their classroom.  On the first day, we trace all the parts to make the frog head and glue it onto paper.  On the second day, we draw the frog body together, and then students have to draw an appropriate background habitat and details to go with their frog.  Then they trace all of their pencil lines with black Sharpie.  On the third day, they color!

This is a nice, easy project that reviews using multiple horizon lines for depth, good craftsmanship and coloring skills, and having good details in a drawing.

       

        

My 3rd graders are finishing up their last birch tree project right now...spring/summer birch trees!  Their next project will also deal with frogs, as that is what they are also learning about in science class.  I'm really excited to do their project with them...I recently saw this pin on Pinterest and it inspired me for the next 3rd grade project.  Instead of doing bugs...I'm going to have them do the life cycle of a frog!  Hopefully I'll have some of those drawings to share next week!

Kindergarten: 4 Seasons Project (Picture Heavy Post!)

Here is the plan for that Four Seasons project I am doing with the kinders, in conjunction with Monet.  As I said before, some teachers stepped up to the plate and read or will read a book about an artist during read-a-loud in class.  Two kinder teachers chose Monet.  When they came to me and asked who a good, easy artist might be to cover, I asked what they were learning in class.  Currently, they are working on the seasons and weather unit from the Core Knowledge listening strand curriculum.  Right away, I knew Monet would be a good artist for them to read about.  He loved to paint outside, he painted in all types of weather, seasons, and times of day.  

So, this project will span out over the course of 4 days.  The first two days will revolve around reviewing what trees look like in the four seasons, and painting a background for each tree.  We'll also paint a tree, without leaves, on each background.  This won't necessarily take up a whole lot of time each class, but I'm using the rest of class to really teach and push cleaning up with paint to the kinders.  They're really good at cleaning tables now, but now we need to work on cleaning brushes and paint palettes.  In fact, Phyl over at There's a Dragon in my Art Room just did a post about clean-up, and it's fantastic!  I already do some of what she suggests, but I may take a few other pointers from her!

Anyways, here is what the students will be doing on days 1 and 2:

Day 1 will be the winter and spring trees...I do the demo first on how I want them to paint the background, and then they do it.  We did both backgrounds first, and then went back in and painted the trees.  I did not give the demo on painting trees, because they should already know how to do those 'y' and 'v' trees we worked on in the cherry blossom unit.

Day 2 will be the summer and fall trees.  Backgrounds are pretty similar, but I'm going to have them add some textured clouds, I think, for the summer tree and instead of doing light blue and white in the fall sky, I'll have them do light blue and dark blue.

Now here's the fun part.  I've seen bubble wrap printing all over Pinterest.  This particular pin is what really inspired this project.  On day 3, I will set up stations around the room at the tables.  Each table will be a different season.  We will write the seasons on the back of each tree so students can take the correct tree to the correct station to add the leaves/snow.

Winter trees will have white snow...I'm going to change the shape of the bubble wrap for this one so it's not a circle but a rectangle so it looks more like snow and less like white leaves...

Spring trees will have green leaves and pink buds...

Summer trees will have green leaves...

And obviously fall!

When I made these prints, I used the block printing ink that I have.  I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the results, especially with the green.  I may change it to regular tempera paint.

On the last day, day 4, I'll have the kiddos glue these all down onto black paper.  I think one class will glue them down in a straight line, winter to fall, and the other class will do a 2x2 setup.