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!

Woven Alligator Puppets in 1st grade

A student favorite! I originally found and adapted this project from my favorite art ed blogger's site, Cassie Stephens. She is my official art ed guru!

The first graders have worked hard in creating woven alligator puppets. I taught this lesson last year and a lot of my students demanded their chance to create one this year.

It begins with a lesson on texture. I have a little poem I teach the kids so they can remember the vocabulary word. It goes like this:

Texture (make a T with hands)
is how something feels (rubs hands)
it can be sharp (say OW! and pretend to touch something sharp)
it can be smoooooth (pretends to touch something smooth)
it can be sticky (pretends to touch something sticky with fingers)
like goo
EW! (pretends to fling goo from hands)

It is super fun.

I then show a visual presentation of alligators in the wild and a close up of their skin. I ask the students to describe the texture to me, they determine it to be bumpy and dry. They then talk to me about how they can recreate or "simulate" that texture in a drawing. I give them green construction paper and they draw their alligator texture with crayon.

We then review how to create a paper loom...we already did this with the Chinese Lantern project for the Lunar New Year. So they were familiar with the process.

Then they were supplied with pre-cut strips of weft in 2 values of green, light and dark. They were instructed to weave a light dark pattern with their paper loom.

The next class the students were shown how to create the puppet alligator head. They created the puppet mouth first out of pre-folded manila paper (check out Cassie's blog for amazing details in creating this device). They were then instructed how to add collage paper in producing the alligator head and attaching it to the puppet mouth.

They are mastering the pop-up collage technique.

The following class they glued their weavings to the puppet head to create the body, cut and glued arms, legs, and a tail. To finish they added additional textures on the body parts with crayons.

Look at those teeth! I love this level of engagement with detail.

Great patterns for texture!

They loved chomping their alligator puppets when they were finished. I was pleased to see their smiles and successes.

Thanks for stopping by!

Celebrations in Visual Culture: Symbols of the Heart & Lunar New Year

February brings us lots of opportunity to explore the art of celebrations and our visual culture. The celebration of Valentine's Day isn't something I directly design lesson around, however, the idea of "Love" and the heart shape is something that I find can guide our art making. Any student, kindergarten through fifth grade can relate to the notion of "love".

We began our discussions around what we thought "love" is, how do we feel it? What are the things in life we love and how do we show it? I also asked them why the heart shape is representative of love. I had a third grade student even remark that he felt that love should be represented by the brain since that is where the idea of love begins. How interesting!

In kindergarten, we explored how to draw and cut symmetrical hearts with paper, draw/paint hearts, form hearts with clay, and fold paper into sculptural hearts.

In first grade, we learned about color theory with warm and cool colors to create mixed media collages.

In 2nd grade, we created textured heart compositions inspired by the artist Jim Dine. Thank you Painted Paper for the inspiration.

In 3rd grade we composed segmented hearts that expressed all the individual things we loved and are currently constructing a "heart shaped lock" inspired by local artist Diane Hansen. A detailed post about this project is coming soon!

In 4th we studied James Rizzi's "Happy Houses", in creating 3-D buildings using motifs such as hearts. I plan to create a separate post to showcase this art project in detail.

Now....onto Lunar New Year!

The Chinese New Year began on Monday February 8th this year. It is the "Year of the Monkey".

I truly enjoyed introducing North Star students to the visual culture of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
Across all grade levels, I presented basic information about the celebration and its significance to our region in the Pacific Northwest. I showed them lots of examples of visual artifacts related to the event such as calligraphy, lanterns, fans, scrolls, zodiac, and the popular dragon symbol.

Kindergarten produced a guided drawing of a dragon and practiced their brush techniques with watercolor.

1st graders produced Chinese paper lanterns inspired by the festival.

2nd grade created paper hand puppets inspired by the Dragon parade.

3rd & 4th grade studied Chinese characters with ink calligraphy in creating their scrolls.

5th graders are working on another paper mache project related to the the Lunar New Year which will also be featured in it's own detailed post. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment below!

Wayne Thiebaud inspired Cake Slice Sculptures

Who doesn't love cake? I know the 5th grade students love it. We've been investigating how to build sculptural forms out of tagboard. We had first began using tagboard paper in the Van Gogh inspired Bedrooms.  The bedroom sculptures gave students an understanding of how paper can be cut, folded, and secured into their intended form. I felt confident they were then able to build a more complex form, like a slice of round cake.

I often create lessons with art history for our inspiration...having an art history degree, it feels natural. This particular lesson explores Pop Art, sculpture, and the artist Wayne Thiebaud.  I remember a print of one of his "Boston Creme" cake paintings hanging in my elementary school growing up.  I always loved this painting because of how well Thiebaud (pronounced Tee-bow) magically made his paintings look like they had the real textures of cake. I had to share it with my students.

Wayne Thiebaud, "Boston Cremes", 1962

I couldn't stop thinking about the lesson I found on Nic Hahn's blog, Mini Matisse. The Mini Matisse is one of many art education blogs I follow. I was inspired by her "Piece of Cake" project. I made some minor changes in that I had the students sponge on tempera paint for the "sponge" part of the cake. I did not have a template for the students to use, they were given parameters for the height of cake (4 inches) and the demonstration I gave for creating their own template for the 3-D slice.

Day 1: They were given 1 sheet of white tagboard, rulers, scissors, masking tape, and a demonstration to create their cake form.

Day 2: They used paper mache to cover their forms with Elmer's Art Paste and newsprint.

Day 3: They painted their cakes with tempera paint and used a mix of shaving cream, glue, and food coloring to "ice" their cake.  This material is almost magical! It is applied much like icing would be with a palette knife. We used craft sticks and they did just fine. The mixture dries with the appearance of a creamy texture due the glue suspending the foam. It is a really amazing and fun medium to use.  It is important to mix the ingredients as close to the time you are using it as possible as the foam settles over time.

They were provided colored sprinkles and glitter to decorate their cakes if they choose.
I even made a icing bag out of a ziploc. They could pipe on white "icing" mixture for an added detail.

Here are some of the results...

How sweet are these cakes!? The students were so proud of their sculptures. They were engaged throughout the whole process and were eager to make their own cake the "most delicious" looking. The younger students would comment about how real they looked and asked when they could make one.

Upon reflection, I found that the students appreciated learning about creating sculptures. Most of their previous knowledge of sculpture was based in using clay. I believe tagboard is an affordable and useful medium for teaching students about construction techniques. They learned how to use implied and actual texture in one artwork as well which is a Washington state art standard for a 5th grader.

I don't know about you, but I want some cake!

Thanks for reading!