Cherry Blossoms with 1st grade

Wherever you might be reading this today, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and sound. Hopefully the innocence and artwork of our students is enough to make this day a little brighter despite all the bad going on in the world this week.

My sweet, sweet first graders have been learning about Japan, studying the beauty of cherry blossoms. Of course, there are bunches of ways to do blossom-inspired projects...

Art with Ms. Gram

alphamom

Creative Jewish Mom

I like the following version for a few reasons. The kids LOVE it, the results are beautiful more often than not, and it's a quickie, taking just one 45-minute period from introduction to project completion.

My student teacher, Miss Caruso, taught this this year, and it was a lot of fun for me to observe! First, she talked to the kids about the blossoms as a gift from Japan and showed a few masters' works--Hiroshige, Hokusai, van Gogh.

Next up, the kids blew watered-down black tempera paint all around their papers. Miss Caruso found that using straws was tricky for some kids, so some of our classes freestyled:

On the morning we did this with one group, the school had hosted a "Donuts with Dad" event, so everyone had sweet, sugary breath. Gross! Haha!

For the blossoms, Q-tips and pink paint were all it took to turn these black spider veins into beautiful branches!

For early finishers, a short video showed them a sped-up version of the same project:

 

 source

These are always a huge hit in the annual art show. More on that soon!