Second Grade
Royal Self Portraits

The second graders' self portrait unit is a royal one. We still discuss adding detail to the face, but we also talk about where on the face our features usually reside. We draw in pencil, painted in tempera, and outlined in sharpie. Don't forget the bling!

Stained Glass Windows

Looking at examples from gothic cathedrals, second graders learn about stained glass and symmetry. We folded black construction paper in half in order to get the pointed arch shape and interior cuts. The "glass" is tissue paper attached from behind with a glue stick or tape.

Saint George and the Dragon- Shadow Puppets

First, we began by reading Tomie dePaola's The Knight and the Dragon, a variation on the tale of Saint George featuring a happy ending for the dragon as well as the humans. Students then created one of the four characters on black construction paper with pencil and construction paper crayon. We attached narrow dowels to the back to make them into shadow puppets. Since my classroom has a suspended ceiling, I used binder clips and paper clips to hang a long white sheet of bulletin board paper to serve as the puppet theater. The students then created a drawing of a setting and wrote their own version of Saint George for small groups to perform. Some of these stories were just wonderful- princesses throwing hissy fits or shopping, baby dragons hatching and making friends, all kinds of great ideas. I made sure to remind them that the story must describe actions characters are taking and words they say to each other, and it worked quite well.

Faith Ringgold Quilt Squares

As a class, we read Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach, observing the theme of family in her work. Then, we drew a picture of ourselves with someone special to us, usually a family member or a few friends. We colored using watercolor crayons, and then "turned crayon into paint" by brushing water across the crayon. Once it dried, the painting was glued to a larger square of cardboard, and the quilt-style border was added by gluing scrap fabric and beads.

Small Town Drawing

We used our own town as a theme for some drawings- I gave the kids lots of pictures to choose from and they did their best to copy the architecture of our area. Adding detail is again important here, the more the merrier when it comes to buildings.

Picasso Style Portrait Collage

Second graders revealed their sense of humor when we made these collages! I told them that they needed to include at least one of all the parts of the face, but to be playful about where they put them.

Pattern Drawing

Using their own hands as a stencil, students drew "ripples" of the shape extending outward, off the page. These stripes were filled with repeating patterns. We used pencil to trace the first hand, but the rest was done entirely with marker.

Stewart Davis Style City Collage



This was one of my favorite projects, and it's new this year. We used construction paper, mirrorboard, corrugated paper, construction paper crayons, and sharpies to create a city on a wide sheet of brown kraft paper.

First Grade
Figure in Action

I make sure every grade does some kind of self portrait, and the first grade creates a full body drawing. Using simple shapes like ovals and rectangles, we combine them into a complex shape, the human body. These were painted in watercolor.

Monet Unit

The first graders learn about Claude Monet, first doing the tissue paper collage with oil pastel in the style of his water lily paintings. Then, we make something two dimensional a little bit three dimensional- the lilies in this bird's eye view are folded so they protrude off the page. We used construction paper crayons for the animals.

Observational Leaf Drawings

Using a variety of real leaves, students learned about contour drawing to make a beautiful drawing. First, we used pencil, then outlined in sharpie, and then, early finishers created lovely backgrounds with lots of crayon leaf rubbings surrounding the subject.

Jasper Johns Collages

Painter Jasper Johns is well known for using bright color and text in his paintings, so we borrowed from him by using students' initials in this colorful paper collage. Construction paper is the basis, but I also gave the kids some corrogated paper to add a bit of texture.

Robots

This was actually just a sub activity, but the results were so charming I put some up here. I left the book Nutsy the Robot Goes to School for the substitute teacher to read, some gray paper, sharpies, crayons, and some geometric shape tracers, and voila! Adorable. The concept of creating a complex shape using simple shapes as building blocks is important in art from kindergarten through adulthood.

Ehlert Food Collage

I loved teaching this unit because it's so colorful and playful, there are a variety of art skills and media involved, kids feel very confident about what the subject looks like, and it gives us a chance to talk about nutrition as well as art. Lois Ehlert's BEAUTIFUL book, Eating the Alphabet, was the inspiration here. She created these illustrations with a technique similar to Eric Carle's, by making paintings, and then cutting shapes from the paintings to form the collaged illustrations.

Clothesline Drawing

Art teachers spend a lot of time and effort helping our students draw human beings, especially the face, but one important way we reveal our identities as people is our choice of clothing. So, for this project, we talked about observing and adding detail to clothes. I hung a real clothesline across the room and filled it with different articles of clothing to help make the drawings as realistic as possible. This drawing was done on a long piece of brown craft paper, using pencil, sharpie, and construction paper crayon.

Audubon Birds

With a little help from the media center, students learned about John James Audubon and created birds based on images in books. These were made from heavy cardstock, colored with crayon, and collaged with paper feathers. It would be even cooler if you have the money for real ones!

It's the close of another school year, and boy, has it been a long one! A double dose of blizzards made our kids remain in school well into June. All year long, I have taken pictures of lots of my students' artwork. And, like last year, I am pleased to share some of them here with you, in case you would like a fun project to do with your kids on your own. This time, I will try not to duplicate the projects I have posted here before. I will post them one grade at a time.


Kindergarten
The Little Smudge

Early in the year, as kindergarteners are getting accustomed to using art supplies, I sometimes give them a little leg up by precutting some elements. In this case, we read Little Smudge, by Lionel de Le Néouanic, and saw how simple shapes can be transformed into more complex things, and so in a collage, turned geometric shapes into something new.

Map of My Town

We learn about line as we create a map of our hometown using different types of lines as roads. I precut the strips of grey construction paper, and they added details with pencil, then sharpie, then crayon.

Self Portrait

Every grade learns to draw a self portrait, even the little ones. I give them large tracer ovals to use for a head with four options for face shape. Then, we talk about adding all the facial features, making sure to emphasize details that often get passed over such as eyelashes, eyebrows, ears, etc.

Louise Nevelson Sculpture

In studying Louise Nevelson's sculptures, students can see how lots of different three dimensional objects can create a sense of unity when they are painted just one color. We used cardboard, wood scraps, beads, tongue depressors, blocks, and beads- found objects.

Smokey the Train

One of my very favorite illustrators from my childhood was Bill Peet, so we read his book, Smokey, and learned about adding details to a drawing as we created trains of our own.


Just as we did last year, my smallest fries learned about rockets and outer space as we read The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System. First, we did the rocket collage, then, the following week, we read about constellations in Zoo in the Sky by Jacqueline Mitton, and created our own as pictured here, using a Q-tip, white paint, and crayons.


Illustrators are often a source of inspiration for my kindergarteners, and Eric Carle is one example we learn about in art. We learned how he creates his illustrations as we watched Eric Carle: Picture Writer together, and on that first day of the lesson, made beautiful painted papers as he did using tempera, brushes, and stamps to mix colors and textures. On day two, we read A House for a Hermit Crab, and used the now-dry papers to cut out a collage of a sea creature on black construction paper.


One fun way to explore texture is creating a rubbing. We did fall leaf rubbings early in the year, but in the springtime, we used rubbing plates to create pajamas for this collage.

Here are some project ideas I've been testing out, in the hopes of doing them with my middle school campers in August:


A woven paper coaster made of catalog pages, tutorial at How About Orange.


A polyhedron I built from a Cheerios box, from the tutorial at CreativeJewishMom.



I made these paper lanterns with dowels, hot glue, sharpies, and vellum. Inside is a fake flickering tealight I found at Michaels. (They don't list all their inventory online, you have to go in to get it.)

More fun with paper up on Flickr, as well as the respective tutorials I used to make them! Tomorrow I'm off the Pile of Craft once we are through singing.

Lots of new beaded jewelry up on Flickr! These beads were made from the pages of various catalogs, really enjoying working them in to my earrings and necklaces.

Flock hand painted collaged cards, set of 3.