One of the first grade teachers borrowed Claude Monet: Sunshine and Waterlilies to read to her class. In that particular book, there is a recipe for scones, which were one of Monet's favorite foods. So, for her activity, they went to the old home ec. room and made scones! Here is my connecting activity:
We are making Monet's pond using various mixed media techniques. On day one, students painted the bottom side of a tray with blue and white acrylic paint to make it look like water.
On day two, I had them cover a half piece of tag board with acrylic gel and tissue paper. These will become the lily pads.
On day three, students will draw some lily pads on the back of the tissue paper collage. We'll cut these out and glue them to our pond.
Then, on the same day, we'll add some crumpled tissue paper flowers. I thought about doing regular, folded tissue paper flowers, but I'm not sure 1st graders would be able to work with something that needs to be precise and small.
For the final day, day 4, of our project, we will make these model magic frogs to glue to our last lily pad! I brought some Model Magic home with me this weekend to play around with it a bit. I've sure you may have seen various posts on Pinterest about these frogs, such as this one. That's what we will make, but I want them to add a silly frog tongue to them as well!
My first year of teaching I did these acrylic Monet paintings on cardboard with 1st graders as well...
