James Rizzi Birds

This beautiful lesson comes from Patty at Deep Space Sparkle. Before stumbling upon it via Pinterest, I'd never heard of James Rizzi, but having taught this lesson, I'm eager to learn more about his bright, bold work. The kids loved looking at it, too!

I've never been one for much directed drawing. But as I learned in one of the AOE classes I took over the summer, DDs can be a great way to boost kids' confidence in their abilities. And who doesn't want that?

After drawing with a pencil, kiddos outlined their birds--or as we called them, pudgy budgies!--with black oil pastel, then painted with liquid watercolor. To prep the kids, we discussed the warm and cool color families; I made a simple worksheet to enforce the content, as well as have kids pre-select their color scheme. Warm colored birds got cool colored backgrounds and vice versa.

 

The kids ate this up! And since we did our initial DD, older students have reported that their second grade siblings cannot stop drawing birds on their own!

Thank you, Patty! This one's a keeper!

Handprint Fish

I've done this project with my first graders for a few years now, but I'm particularly pleased with this year's results. I changed things up a bit in an effort to enforce the learning aspect, though getting more consistently great-looking final pieces was a happy side effect!

On the first day of art class, after the 'welcome to art' blah-blah, we painted our backgrounds. Yes, I painted with first graders on the first day of art class. This group of first graders did not have kindergarten art, meaning this was our first time together EVER. Call me silly or call me brave, but please don't call me 'cause I hate talking on the phone.

Using blue square paper as the canvas, kiddos used multiple values of blue, as well as white, to blend their colors directly on their paper. Ooo-ing and ahhh-ing ensued! Not having to wash the brushes in between colors made this part quick and easy and was a good introduction for my amateur painters.

On the second day of class, we discussed background, middle ground, and foreground. Since the backgrounds had been completed previously, the students proceeded to adding a middle ground--seaweed, sand, and bubbles--while I called kids a few at a time to make an orange handprint on a separate sheet of blue paper.

Once the handprints were dry, I proceeded to add orange fish lips and a white spot for the eye. Then I cut out each fish. All 100+ of them. Thank goodness for a good pair of scissors and Netflix!

Since these kiddos never had kindergarten art, proper glue bottle usage was pretty foreign to most of them, so we spent a decent chunk of time covering that before using "dots, not lots" to glue the fish, creating the foreground.

A little black paint on a Q-tip made a sweet little fishie pupil, and the kiddos were all set! Square 1 Art, here we come!

Time go get back to my Netflix. This time, I'll be gluing all of those sweet underwater scenes onto the Square 1 Art paper. Le sigh.

Super-Speedy Sunflower Still Lifes

My super student teacher (now a proud graduate--congrats, LC!) started this Vincent van Gogh project with the third graders. I have done Vincent's sunflowers before, but it was nice to see how Miss Caruso approached it, particularly in a time crunch, as it was May and our classes were numbered. I like to do this project at the end of the school year 'cause sunflowers just scream SUMMER, HERE I COME!

After talking about VVG and his passion for fashion sunflowers, Miss Caruso had the kids prep their paper, drawing a border around their 9 x 12" white sheet, Phyl style! (Bless you, Phyl, you practical genius.) Then they painted the background using two colors, one on either side of their pre-drawn horizon line.

(This was great timing for our first day of this project--a few minutes were spent to introduce the project, kiddos glossed their coil pots, and then did this background portion.)

On the second day, students entered the art room to find some lovely (fake) sunflowers decorating their tables. These flowers served as inspiration for adding vases and flowers. Miss Caruso did a great demo showing how to twist and turn the brush to manipulate the paint into petals and leaves. Kiddos painted in this order:

1. Paint a vase and give it two values, VVG style:

2. Use a pencil to draw the brown centers of each flower you intend to paint:

3. Use the penciled centers as a guide to show where to paint the petals:

4. Once petals are done, go back and paint those centers (doing it in this order prevents a lot of "AHHH MY PETALS TURNED BROWN" panic attacks on the part of the 9-year-olds)

5. Go to town adding leaves, values, details, and the like!

6. Sit back and admire your work whilst telling your art teacher and student teacher how beautiful they look today amidst the field of sunflowers in the art room:

7. Clean up your mess, wash yo' hands, and tell your art teacher to stop using her iPhone to take pictures of your awesome artwork 'cause the lighting is all kinds of funky with this neon paint.

Anyway, there are 57698234 ways (I counted) to teach about van Gogh's sunflowers--for a quickie, I highly recommend this method. The timeline is fast but the results are fab!

Monochromatic Coil Pots AND Tips for Using Self-Hardening Clay

Like its cool cousin the pinch pot, coil pots are one of those projects that the vast majority of us probably do. There are many creative ways to jazz these stinkers up. But if you're like me, kiln-less, with 300 pounds of self-hardening/air-dry clay sitting in the corner staring back at you, the options are a bit more limited than our kiln-blessed amigos.

Luckily, this year, my student teacher arrived at the PERFECT time, ready to take over teaching just when third grade was ready to start the coil pot monotony fun! Thanks, Miss Caruso! :-)

We decided that to make the pots are little more interesting, we'd limit students' color choices. Miss Caruso ultimately opted to make the painting process monochromatic, and as is the case with many projects, the presence of boundaries really fostered creativity! It was also a good review of the color mixing we had done earlier in the year (here and here).

If you're going to coil without a kiln, I have a few tips for ya:

• Consider giving your kids a practice day. I have found it VERY beneficial to use modeling clay to practice, taking the time to teach the physical making of the coils and subsequent construction of the pot. You can also use this class period to talk about the history of clay/coiling, why someone might coil as opposed to pinch their vessel, etc.
• I highly recommend using the slip and score technique. Otherwise, your coils are bound to come apart.
• I mix a small amount of white vinegar into my slip, which seems to build a better bond. Granted, it makes the art room stink even more than the usual Sharpie/paint/children after recess scent with which we're all so familiar, but a little stink isn't so bad.
• Have your kiddos build their pot atop a canvas or other textural base. Even the self-hardening stuff will stick to your smooth tables. If you don't have the dough to invest in canvas boards, or if you want to use what you have (and/or you're just cheap like me, bah haha), small pieces of rough wallpaper will do the trick! (I have stacks of wallpaper sample books and chop those pages up for each kiddo.)
• Just in case, have a hot glue gun and lots of glue sticks ready for when any poorly-made pots are dry and a-crackin'! The air-dry clay tends to undergo some major separation as it hardens.
• Paint your pots with acrylic paint. Or, if you prefer tempera, seal the pot with a layer of acrylic gloss medium when all the painting is done and dried.

Any air-dry gurus have anything to add?

And hey, if you're reading this and you, too, are fire-free and are thinking, "girlfriend, there are a thousand ways to skin the coil pot cat, I've got crazy creative ideas for you!" then please, enlighten me!

'Til then, enjoy the one-color wonders!

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!