Painted Paper Shape Bird Houses

There was so many great birdhouse lessons floating around Pinterest this year that I was inspired to try a version of my own. Just to name a few, inspiration came from these posts from these blogs: For the Love of Art, Kids Artsits, Art with Mrs. Nguyen, and Painted Paper Art.

I Can Statements:
I Can create a birdhouse using 5 or more shapes.
I Can identify the shapes I use in my birdhouse.

Day 1: Painted Paper!

I recently just got to the painted paper party so we had to take an incredibly fun week in Kindergarten and First to make a lot of painted paper. Each day in the rotation was in charge of one color. Each student got to make a 18x24 piece of paper that got cut down into 4 smaller ones when dried.

Day 2: Birds!

They did a bird draw along with me straight with sharpie. While drawing, we talked about all the ways they could make them different and give them different personalities even though they were all following the same basic drawing. For painting, they used smaller brushes and all colors were made available. I wasn't planning on the birds being more than three colors, the plan was body one color, wings and tail another color. However, I forgot to say that and it naturally took off to paint them in any way possible! Some ended up with stripes, some with polka dots, and some with every color. They turned out more beautiful than I imagined, after all, this year was really about letting go and this proved to me the magic that happens when I do.

Day 3: Assemble the houses!

At the start of this class we had a really great time looking at a LOT of different birdhouses. I tried to find the greatest variety of colors, sizes, shapes, designs, and themes and after looking at the images we made a list of what a bird house had to have.
Here is what they came up with:
1. Hole for the birds to get in
2. Roof
3. Main house
4. Walls
We also came to the really excited conclusion that they could look like ANYTHING!

After this amazing discussion took place I talked about creating our bird houses using shapes and all the shapes they know and can use. Then they watched my demo video of constructing my house. The big take away of the demo video was drawing on the white side of the paper. I did provide circle tracers but all the rest of the shapes were drawn free hand.

(Assembled birdhouses without oil pastels or birds)

Day 4: Put a bird on it!
On this last day we started with a brief shape assessment, I handed back houses and gave them the assessment you see below and they counted up their shapes, wrote them down, and handed it back to me with their name on it.

 After we got that out of the way it became the best day ever! They got their birds back, still on the white paper, and they watched my demo of decorating my house and adding my birds. I highly encouraged them to use all the lines we focused on a bunch throughout the year as well as patterns and themes. All the decorating was done with oil pastels and black sharpies. I did put the paper back out this day for them to add more shapes if they needed/wanted to add more.

 My favorite part was them attaching their birds. Most kiddos painted two birds so I gave them the option of using both or just one. They attached them using one of the coolest art supplies ever--3D-Os. Sold here by Dick Blick or School Specialty. They are a foam circle with adhesive on both sides, they give a subtle 3D effect by hovering about a 1/4 inch off the paper.

In the bottom left birdhouse above the student accidentally cut off the bird's legs and this was his problem solving solution! YES!

Bottom right and top above, Lots of "love birds" appeared in first grade...

This lesson/project was SO FUN and colorful and the students loved it as well.

Winter Forests with K & 1 (2015)

With winter hopefully over here in Wisconsin (you just never know!) it is about time I share the winter inspired projects I did with my kiddos...

This project was inspired by this post via pinterest which was pretty minimal so I look things into my own hands!

I Can statement: I can tell you what a landscape is. I can show trees up close and far away using size and placement.

Day 1: Texture review, creating painted paper

We kicked off the day reading Snow Party by Harriet Ziefert and then reviewed what texture was. I also started to introduce landscapes.

After our book and our chat they got busy making 12x18 pieces of green painted paper with lots of tree textures.

Day 2: Talking about landscapes, Painting the background

We read another BEAUTIFUL book called Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner and then talked more about landscapes and what made something a landscape. Then they started creating a background for their forest.

I had them use a white crayon to draw their horizon line and then they sponge painted the snow with white tempera paint on a dark blue piece of 12x18 construction paper. When they finished the ground, I had a station set up to splatter paint the snow in the sky. If they were goofing around or getting paint on their faces on purpose during the splatter painting they were cut off. I used watered down tempera and big #12 watercolor brushes for the splatter. I use the technique where you get the brush nice and sloppy wet and hold it with one hand and then tap it with your other hand over the paper.

Day 3: Learning about size and placement, activity, and adding trees!

We read the book First Snow by Bernette Ford.

Then using the book I asked questions about why the trees were big or small in the illustrations and they gave me examples of where they see the same concept in their lives. To better understand the concept, and prepare them to add their trees to their artwork, I created a document in SMART Notebook for my SMART Board with a background very much like their paintings and variety of sized trees. They look turns coming up and placing the trees from biggest in the front to smallest on the top of the hill/horizon line. 

I 100% feel this activity helped solidify the concept and allowed for so many to be successful.

They got back their painted paper cut in 1/2 (so I have extra!) to create their trees from. They had to draw at least 3 tree triangles that were different sizes on the back. Then, they cut them out and glued them to their backgrounds to be biggest closest to smallest furthest away. They were also given strips of brown to be their tree trunks. It was fun to challenge them to make the biggest and smallest tree in their class! 

I also did this project with my Adaptive Art high schools students and it was really successful with them too!

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.

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*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.