Jim Dine "Four Hearts" with 1st & 2nd Grade

Back in February I started introducing Contemporary Artists to a few different grade levels. First and Second grade were introduced to Jim Dine. It was right around Valentine's Day when I began to introduce him which was perfect timing as he is widely known his heart art!

Last year I started recording some of my demos ahead of time and during instruction I would play the videos and narrate as students watched. I started this at the end of last year, just twice, and I was really surprised with how many more students were successful. I believe what it came down to was they were in their seats, full attention on the screen, rather than standing around a table with the ability to chat. And be distracted by their friends. And standing so close they can't keep their hands to themselves.

Anywho, while I was making my example for this project, I realized it would be the perfect occasion to use this type of instruction.

I Can Statements:
I can create a heart artwork inspired by the artist Jim Dine.
I can mix primary colors to get secondary colors.

Day 1: Short introduction to Jim Dine and talking about the kinds of things that appear in his art work and talking about Pop Art. This is all done through this PDF artist poster I put together...

Then a closer look at this painting, one of my favorites....

Jim Dine "Four Hearts", 1969

I try to use color mixing as much as possible with younger kiddos so I decided to make the hearts four different colors that they would have to mix instead of duplicating Dine's work. So they started with watching my demo video and predicting what colors I was going to get as they watched me mix. Once the video was done they drew a heart in each corner of their paper. I tried with the first class to not have them break up the paper into four sections first, but it was a little bit of a bomb so for the other classes they drew a horizontal and vertical line to break up their papers before drawing the hearts.

AND THEN THE MAGIC HAPPENED. They got primaries and white and had to mix a green, purple, orange, and choice color (in no particular heart on their paper). I love watching them mix colors....there is so much joy in making colors appear by your own hands.

Day 2: Started with looking at my artist poster of Dine again and seeing what they remembered about the artist and then watching another demo video of creating the background. They used their fingers like stamps and this time did not have to mix secondaries to create their background. I covered/filled my background like Dine's piece but they were not required to.

Day 3: A few minutes were taken to trace their hearts with sharpie for a little extra pop!

Very happy with how these turned out and I could tell how much they loved mixing their colors and using their fingers to paint!

Jefferson Elementary...

McDill Elementary...