Shooting Line Rocket Ships (15'-16')

This project (inspired by Art with Mr. E's) is officially one of my new favorites for K&1. It was a great review for lines and a super fun exploration of materials!

I Can identify different types of lines.
I Can explore many different materials.

Day 1: Reviewing lines. Line paintings.
Lines are one of the first things we visit in the year so I love doing a refresher project on them at the end of the year. To kick this project off I drew a picture on the SMART Board that contained all the lines they learned previously and they took turns coming up and finding them. Then we did some whole body fun by having groups of students make the different types of lines with their bodies! Just an observation: my classes that were most behaviorally challenging ended up doing the best with this activity.

Dashed and Zig-Zag

Castle and Thick Line

After these activities they went to their seats and drew each type of line with a sharpie. Then they got to explore their first new material--metallic watercolors. Not really a "new" material as far as watercolors go but still VERY exciting for them to see sparkles and shine! I really encouraged them to have their colors touch but it was a little hard of a concept because many just tried to follow the line and not make the bands of color. I also had a glitter tempera paint station set up for them to add MORE sparkles if they wanted. Obviously they wanted it.

Day 2: Building Rocket Ships. Assessment.
Tracers. I always go back and forth on using them or not. But, an old principle (and art department head) once told me that as long as the learning goal isn't creating that specific shape they are ok. So, that's what I did. Each part of the rocket ship had a tracer: the main body, the wings, and the booster. After they watched my demo video on using the tracers and gluing the pieces together I let them run wild with a huge variety of papers with different textures and patterns. This was our second material that they explored.

Because the process of building the rockets was very independent, I used this time to pull students over to me for a verbal assessment to identify the different types of line. I had the lines drawn on a piece of paper and they went through and named as many as possible. Each student took about 30 seconds or less which made a very quick and easy assessment. The one little bump was a student would come over to ask me something while I was assessing another and they would spit out the answer before the kiddo getting assessed could answer.

Day 3: Adding the rocket streams and backgrounds.
 We started the day talking about creating the rocket stream out of their line paintings. Again they watched my demo video and brainstormed the different shapes the stream could be and how it was okay if we cut some of our lines off. Then they added their rocketship to black paper and added some amazing details with our last material exploration -- metallic markers. I pre-punched stars on metallic paper that they could add as well and more tempera glitter paint. One last option for them was adding an astronaut. Again, I provided a tracer. The success rate overall on this project was so high and each was its own beautiful individual work of art with so much personality showing through.

Below are detail pictures...I was so blown away by some of these kiddos!!!!

K & 1 Eric Carle Inspired Ocean Collages (2015)

While 2nd grade was learning about Wyland and his artwork was up in my room, I took advantage of it and created these collages with my Kindergarteners and First Graders. The octopus was my own idea and the seahorse idea came from here via Pinterest.

I Can Statements: I Can talk about what happens when paint mixes. I Can create painted paper. I Can look at artwork to learn about the Ocean. I Can create an Octopus/Seahorse in the ocean from painted paper.

Day 1: Eric Carle Illustrations, and Painted Paper

To kick off the project we "read" via watching on Youtube Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle. I don't always do books this way but I couldn't get it from the library in time and this was a really nice version.

*

*This book is all about sea dads and it's hilarious to see K and 1st's confusion about the dad being the "pregnant" one. It is against everything they've ever known, but a great science connection!

Then we looked at a variety of Eric Carle books and talked about how he makes his artwork. I'm thinking next year to make this more in depth and have them actually sit around the books and really look and explore, maybe even find clips of Carle working to show them.

Then we spent the rest of class making really large pieces of painted paper. 18x24 white pieces of paper were used and each day in the rotation a different color paper was created. We made Yellow, Orangish, Purple, and Green using tempera paint pre-mixed into different shades and tints. We used big stiff brushes, paint scrapers, and my personal favorite Roylco Funny Floppy Foam brushes. When dry, I cut each piece into 9x12 pieces.

Day 2: Creating Sea Creature.

Kindergarten created Octopi (is that right?) this day and I had them do it by drawing the legs and body separate to ease in cutting. They traced a circle lid for the body and drew worms for the legs. Then they glued it together on a 12x18 white paper. 

First grade was a little different this day. They created their seahorse with me through a draw along and then spent time cutting the seahorse, seaweed, and coral. They did not do any gluing and I gave them a large envelope to keep all their pieces in with their seahorse.

 

Day 3: Cutting, gluing, and painting.

Both groups spent time cutting and gluing seaweed and other creatures. When they finished I had two stations set up for painting water and bubbles. Water was one station, bubbles was at another. Water was regular watercolors and bubbles were glitter tempera paint stamped with a marker cap. When they did their bubbles, I was there to glue on googley eyes with tacky glue.

Day 4: Finishing up!

Quite a few kiddos at both levels needed more time so the last day was spent on finishing up and drawing underwater artwork on big 18x24 paper that they could take with that day. THEY LOVED IT.

Stylized Food Chains with 5th Grade

Final product wise, this might just have been my FAVORITE project this past school year. I am so unbelievably proud of the work these 5th graders did on these! I found this project here via Pinterest. Thanks a faithful attempt!

I Can Statements:

I Can talk about stylized art

I Can use the Library resource A-Z Animals Encyclopedia to research a food chain that includes 3 or more animals

I Can show a food chain mouth-in-mouth using stylized images of plants and animals

Day 1: Students came in with this image on the screen...

I asked them to figure out what they all had in common, eventually they ended up describing stylized without even knowing it (I love when that happens!) and I revealed the vocabulary of stylized. To better explain I showed them this awesome graphic I put together in lucidpress....

After a bit more discussion we had a "quiz" where I put up an image and they had to guess stylized or realistic. They did perfect. Then I showed them our inspiration image...

They just wrapped up a science unit about ecosystems and food chains so it was the perfect project to connect to the classroom. After explaining the I Cans and the how to do the research and navigate the site they were using for research, they grabbed laptops and got to work filling out the packet below. There was quite a bit of sketching involved but it really seemed to help them understand how to break down their animals and plants.

Day 2: After I approved their sketches they got to work! They had an option to draw and color with colored pencil or to collage with paper.

We took about 4 class periods total on this, 1 for intro and research, and the rest were workdays. Next time I will probably have them writing something to go along with them when they are displayed.

 I just can't contain how happy these make me!