"Cat and Bird" mixed media collage

1st graders are wrapping up their studies of mixed media collages with this book, "Cat and Bird", by Geraldine Elschner.   I began the lesson by reading this book aloud to my students and then we discussed the artwork together.

We used some visual thinking strategies in our talks about the landscapes in the book. My students pointed out that the cat was chasing the bird over rooftops, bridges, and that the horizon line was important in knowing where the sky was separate from the ground.

Next my students used oil pastels on construction paper to draw a horizon line and a city landscape inspired by the story. They then used geometric shapes to draw their buildings and bridges. 

On the second day they added painted paper collage details such as additional buildings and bridges. Lastly, they followed me in a directed drawing of the cat, that they then cut and glued to their compositions.

I was pleased to see that these artists were able to show me their understanding of using a horizon line in a landscape. The demonstrated their use of collage techniques as well. 

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Our artists on the district home page!

I was thrilled to learn that my district's photographer would be visiting my art room to capture the action of art making. Mrs. Mulcrone's 1st grade class was busy that day learning how to create a collage inspired by the book, "Stellaluna".  (They had studied bats and written a report prior to this lesson). These young artists had lots of practice creating collages before this day, so they were ready to shine for the photographer.

Here are the photographs from that wonderful day. Aren't they just the cutest? I am so proud of them. When I opened up my browser and saw the photos on the district site, I squee'd with happiness! My sweet little firsties!

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"Creepy Carrots" collages created by 1st grade

Have you read the picture book, "Creepy Carrots", by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Peter Brown?  My students absolutely love the artwork in this fun story about Jasper Rabbit and his love/fear of carrots. We were inspired by the illustrator, Peter Brown and created our collages.

 

I began this lesson by reading the story to my 1st grade artists. We looked closely at the artwork by the amazing Peter Brown. We noticed how he used black, white and grey to create the backgrounds and used orange for the carrots. It really made the carrots pop!

Next, we created the background landscape with black and gray construction paper plus white chalk.
 
I asked my students to create a white cloud with the chalk and rounded hill with gray paper.
 Next we drew organic carrot shapes with our orange painted paper, cut them out and glued them to the background.

The next class we added fun facial features for our creepy carrots, carrot textures, and even Jasper Rabbit!

We had a blast creating these collages! We practiced our collage techniques of drawing, cutting, and gluing as well as visual story telling.

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Painted Paper Pumpkins created by 1st Grade

I really love the look of painted paper and my students seem to REALLY enjoy creating them. I was inspired to teach this lesson by looking at the work of Laura Lohmann over at The Painted Paper. She is the master in my opinion and the work her students create in the Fall is absolutely stunning. You can check it out here.

We spent a lot of time exploring and using a variety of painting tools in creating textures in paint. It was a blast!Then we set to creating warm & cool color painted papers.

The next class we looked at geometric vs. organic shapes. With their cool papers, they were to create 2 geometric rectangles. With their warm papers, they were challenged to draw organic pumpkin shapes and cut them out for collage. They demonstrated their understanding of drawing, cutting, overlapping, and collage techniques in assembling their Pumpkin landscapes.

The last class, they were given oil pastels to add details like highlights, shadows, vines, stars, a moon, and more. Most students were compelled to transform their pumpkins in to Jack-o-lanterns since Halloween is closing in and it is a huge part of their visual culture.

I love to see their imaginations come alive in the last part of adding artistic details.

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2nd Grade Manila Jeepneys inspired by Robert Alejandro

What I love so much about the age of the internet is how much access we as educators have to our world teaching community. This year I've followed and learned from some amazing art educators here in the United States. One of which is Don Masse of Shine Brite Zamorano. He taught me that sharing living artists works with my students is a very effective instructional strategy. My kids are engaged in knowing that this particular artist is alive, working, and successful in their field. 

I took a riff off of Don's Jeepney stop motion animation lesson and adapted it for my ipad-less classroom. I designed a guided drawing, painting, and collage lesson instead. We had been studying landscapes in our painting unit, this city scape lesson was super fun!

I began by sharing an interview with the Filipino artist Robert Alejandro who's main message was to create, create, create!

I then showed my students examples of his graphic illustrations of Jeepneys as inspiration for our lesson. They discussed how Alejandro used color and pattern to design his Jeepneys. I also showed them real Jeepneys so they could compare them with buses they've seen in their community.

Their learning objective was to create a colorful, patterned Jeepney inspired by Alejandro's work and then add it to a collage cityscape using neutral colors.

Here are some of their results.

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Mexican style guitars by 1st Grade

 

 These fun and colorful painted artworks began on Cinco de Mayo and was inspired by Laura Lohmann's lesson over at The Painted Paper. I began by sharing some examples of Mexican guitars as a reference for colors and patterns.

I gave my first grade artists guitar stencils to trace since the learning objective isn't necessarily drawing but paint mixing. I demonstrated a variety of color mixing techniques and my artists made choices in how they wanted to paint their guitar shapes.  The following class we added more paint, oil pastel, and collage elements for details.

My first graders really liked this sgraffito technique of flipping your brush over to draw into the wet paint.

I have a TON of images from their work. Here are some of the results.

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