"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.

Thanks for stopping by!

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.

Thanks for stopping by!