Fabulous Art with Fabulous Kids!

First Graders rocked the house with their shape self-portraits.  We looked at the Swiss artist Paul Klee and learned about his life...he was an art teacher, a poet, and a violinist!  Definitely a man of the Arts.  We looked at a variety of abstract and realistic artworks, and even played a game of identifying which works were abstract, and which were realistic.  We looked over Klee's work and decided he was quite abstract.  A discussion of lines, shapes, and artwork titles helped us understand what we were looking at.  Sometimes a title means everything. 


When we looked at "Head of a Man," we knew we were about to do something interesting.  Students were given a plastic bag full of tag board shapes, and had to make our self-portrait using only shapes.  It was such fun to see how everybody's work came out.  We first drew with pencil, then outlined them with marker, and then colored them with crayons that matched the color of the marker they used.  Students had lots of fun making their faces all kinds of colors. Some students used wild colors along with their wild shapes, so we had some very interesting self-portraits!  I really love this lesson.  Take a look at the results:

  

Great Beginnings

The school year is starting nicely and we are all in the swing of things.  Each class has made its sketchbook cover.  The sketchbook is a great way that every grade can plan, assess, and reflect on art they are learning about or making.  Each grade has its own format and we work in it all year long, adding new things and using it as a learning tool.

3rd Graders Working on Warm & Cool Grids

Kindergarten painted horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, then painted in action lines like zigzag and wavy in a new color the next week.  We got to really experience the tempera paint and the procedures for good painting.

First grade painted directional lines and then made A-B patterns with geometric shapes.  We reviewed primary colors the next week and also the procedures for good painting.

Second grade focused on geometric shapes and textures, as well as tints and shades.  We added in active lines with a hatching technique.

Third learned about making grids and turned their sketchbook cover into a huge grid, then put in geometric and organic shapes.  They then began adding in warm colors for the positive space and cool colors for the negative space.

Fourth grade made a contour line drawing in a Bug's Eye point of view, then painted the negative space with a tint of their team's choosing.

Fifth grade learned about still life, set up still life items for their individual tables, drew them, and then worked in complementary colors.  They looked for the light source and then chose whether or not to use their color scheme or their watercolor paints to make value changes.  There was a lot of planning for color, so as to maximize their positive and negative space, and have good contrast.

All in all, a terrific start for the school year.  Every grade has learned something new and reviewed something from the past.  On to the big stuff--but now we have our sketchbooks, to chronicle our work!