Finished Winter Birch Trees

Here are some of the finished watercolor birch trees.  As I'm grading them, I'm doing some reflecting on this particular version of my project.

1. I need to do some more practice painting with the watered-down watercolor paint for painting snow.  I don't want to "baby" the students by giving them already watered down paint...I want them to learn how to do the technique themselves, therefore it appears I need to give them more practice to master the technique.

2. I need to get my classroom some watercolor pencils!  I figured out what it is that I don't like about the coloring...it's the crayons!  I think these would look so much better with some watercolor pencils instead.

3. I noticed quite a few more students being successful with the depth aspect in this project compared to the fall birch trees...hoorah!

4.  We need to work a little more on shadows from a light source...some of the shadows are on the wrong side of their trees...

P.S. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I GET THE CODE TO EMBED MY ARTSONIA GALLERY ONTO MY BLOG?  I've seen other blogs with the little button that says "check us out on Artsonia" but I can't figure out how to add it to my own blog!

We'll do one more version of these come spring time...

 I hate to say it but these two boys are my star art students in 3rd grade...they have a really great grasp on how to use watercolor paint! 

I wish the artist on the left had used less birch tree lines and the artist on the right had used more birch tree lines!

Next Kindergarten Unit: Cherry Blossoms

As Valentine's Day approaches, I like doing lessons on the Cherry Blossom tree.  I think cherry blossoms are very beautiful...I wish they could survive in the North Country!  I don't like doing Valentine's and kitschy projects like that, so this is how I compromise.  The students still get to use pinks and reds, which makes them feel like they are making a Valentine's Day project, but I still get to teach them a little history!

I will be starting this unit on Monday with my students, but I wanted to share what I've done in the past two years with regards to cherry blossoms.  I have a power point that I use to share a little bit of the history of the cherry blossom...
     -They originate in Japan
     - In 1912, Japan gave the U.S. 3,020 cherry blossom trees as a gift of friendship.
              ~That is how we have them in the U.S. today!

We look at lots of beautiful pictures of cherry blossom trees from the park down in Washington D.C. as well as pictures of the trees from Japan.  I use this lesson as a way to introduce drawing more realistic trees, a horizon line, and coloring the sky ALL the way to the ground.  (Gulp...Phyl will dislike this, but I use the "Y" tree technique for the younger Kindergarten and 1st grade students! ;)

Here are my plans for this year's Kindergarten unit of cherry blossoms:
Our first project with be a one day project.  We'll look at my power point, and then create a tempera painting of a cherry blossom branch.  I've been dying to do this simple stamping project that has been floating around Pinterest, so we'll be adding the flowers by stamping pink paint using the bottoms of water bottles.

For the second project, we'll spend two days to complete it.  We'll review how to draw a cherry blossom branch, and then do so with brown crayon.  I'll introduce watercolor paint to the Kinders, which they haven't used yet, and we'll paint over the top of our branch to do a wax resist.  The next class, we'll talk about texture and add the flowers using the crumpled tissue paper.  This will give a nice segue into a texture unit for Kindergarten.

Last year I did this cherry blossom project with my 1st graders.  This is what we made:

The rest of these projects are from my first year of teaching.  Looking at them now, I feel like they are very undeveloped for projects, but I'll share them anyways!  It's not that I think they are bad, I just see very boring compositions now, and I didn't use the projects to their full potential.  When it's time to recycle these projects, they will definitely be getting a makeover!

The following pictures are from a "heart blossom" project I did with 1st grade.  I did this as a 1-day filler project right around Valentine's day while we were in between projects.  We talked about cherry blossom trees, but then I did let them make heart blossoms to glue on.  We also talked about symmetry (folding small pieces of paper in half to cut out half a heart).  These were ink blown trees using India ink and straws.

For the final cherry blossom project I have to share, I must say that I'm almost embarrassed to share!  Am I being too hard on myself?  Maybe...but I can definitely say I have grown from these! This project was done with Kindergarten, at the same time as the heart blossom project.  I did not teach them the "y" tree technique...I just simply asked them to paint a tree without any demonstration.  Looking back at it now, back then I felt the projects that were the best were the ones that were symmetrical, and for lack of a better word, "tree-like".  But now, I think the better ones were the asymmetrical ones that look more like branches instead of trees!

A Little Bit of NYS Common Core...TEXT HEAVY POST!

Friday was the last day of the 2nd quarter.  Usually we have a half day with students and a half day of time for grading and submitting report card grades, however yesterday, they cancelled school with the students and gave us a full day of staff development regarding the Common Core.  I'll have to admit, at first I was a little annoyed and not really sure how this was going to connect to my subject area, but alas, I was pleasantly surprised!

I didn't have to attend any of the common core meetings about math, but I was asked to attend the 1st-2nd grade ELA Common Core meeting.  Here's what I learned there:

NYS contracted out to a company called Core Knowledge to create  K-2 curriculum for the listening and learning strand of the Common Core.  Since the younger students, especially Kinders and 1st graders, aren't at a high enough reading level yet to start reading in-depth texts, the Common Core focuses more on listening to text for comprehension and decoding.  In other words, teachers at these younger levels are asked to do more read-a-loud activities with students for "Listening to Learn."  This right there took a little bit of weight off my shoulders...all along I've thought, how am I supposed to incorporate reading with my kinders?  Well, I don't necessarily have to have the Kinders read on their own (aside from my art sight words...shape words, color words, etc.) but it's OK to do read-a-louds with them!

The idea behind doing more read-a-louds at this younger age is that students will begin to have a larger vocabulary for when they do start reading.  There were some great statistics that I can't remember from the presentation...about students from fluent families (families who read to their kids at home) versus students from poverty (who don't get reading at home) and their drop out rates from school...and they obviously showed that students who are read to at home at a younger age, have a higher chance of graduating school.

Another thing is that these grade levels should be reading 50% fiction and 50% non-fiction works throughout the year.

Anyways, back to the exciting part.  Our school district is adopting the curriculum map created by Core Knowledge for K-2, and I rather like it!  Each year builds upon the other year and incorporates science and history in the younger grades.  The curriculum currently has 9 strands, or units, for the school year (before next year, three more NYS specific strands will be added).  Again, these units are just for the listening and learning strand of common core...not writing, reading, math, etc.

Here are what the current strands are and my brainstorming for extension activities in art class:

Kindergarten
Nursery Rhymes and Fables (3 weeks)
The Human Body: Five Senses (3 weeks): self-portraits, artwork with texture
Stories (3 weeks): Elmer, listen to a story and draw a picture from listening to the details
Plants (3 weeks)
Farms (3 weeks): drawing shape barns and animals, incorporating a background
Kings and Queens (3 weeks): design a crown
Seasons and Weather (3 weeks): trees in the different seasons, background details
Colonial Towns and Townspeople (3 weeks)
Taking Care of Earth (3 weeks): recyclable art

Now, some of these might not fall where I'd like them to, but it's okay for me to do a fall season tree drawing in the fall, even though the seasons unit won't happen until probably spring time...this will help the students have background knowledge in the unit when it happens in class.

1st Grade
Different Lands Similar Stories (2 weeks): Compare artwork from different cultures/styles that are of the same subject/story...i.e. compare Van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles with Lichtenstein's Bedroom at Arles...compare Mona Lisa with modern parodies of Mona Lisa and then draw your own modern Mona Lisa!
Fables and Stories (3 weeks)
The Human Body: Body Systems, Germs, Diseases and Preventing Illness (3 weeks): color mixing by squirting paint on hands and shaking hands...connect the spread of colds with the mixing of the paint all while reviewing primary and secondary colors....draw germs using organic shapes
Early World Civilizations (4 weeks): Cave art
Early American Civilizations (4 weeks): Native Americans, Colonial Quilts
Astronomy (2 weeks)
Animals and Habitats (3 weeks): shape animals with depth and appropriate background (fits right in with my shape animal unit I already did!)
Fairy Tales (2 weeks)
History of Earth (3 weeks) My dinosaur unit will fit great here! Plus, it will get both 1st grade teachers on the same page with what they teach...they'll both be doing the dinosaur unit before they go on their field trip to Dinosaur World!


2nd Grade
Fighting for a Cause (4 weeks) This unit is about people like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, etc.
Fair Tales and Tall Tales (2 weeks)
Cycles in Nature (3 weeks): Eric Carle, catterpillar to butterfly
Insects (3 weeks): viewpoint drawings...view from a bug...
Ancient Greek Civilizations (3 weeks): pottery with patterns
Greek Myths (3 weeks)
Early Asian Civilizations (3 weeks): Chinese New Year
Charlotte's Web I & II (two 3 week units): This unit is one the 2nd grade teacher is going to try out this year and suggested a large paper-mache type sculpture of Charlotte herself!
Immigration (3 weeks): Statue of Liberty, Keith Haring