2nd Grade Underwater Self-Portraits (2015)

Second graders loved Robert Wyland so much that we did two projects inspired by him. Out first was Warm and Cool Waves, the second were these AWESOME underwater self-portraits inspired by this, this AND this project via pinterest.

I Can statements: I Can draw a self-portrait with my features in the correct places. I Can draw a sea creature realistically.

Day 1: To kick off the project we looked at portrait photographs that were taken underwater and discussed what looked the same and different as above water. 

I showed them this video of Wyland painting underwater to connect back to Wyland. How freaky and awesome would it be to paint underwater!?

After all this chatting we got to work drawing the self-portraits. I did a draw along with them up on the SMART Board to help guide where to put features and how to draw the snorkel and mask.

Day 2: I checked out a large variety of sea animal books from the library and had them look through the books and choose a sea creature they wanted to draw. Before they added it to their portrait they had to practice drawing it using the books and attempt to make it look more realistic. I really pushed drawing from the images and not from their minds. This was a little difficult of a concept for them, but by the last group of 2nd graders, I finally found the right way to describe what I meant. When their practice was done I gave them their portrait to add the creature to. Nearing the end of class we came back together to talk about what good coloring looks like with crayons and how to achieve it so those that were ready to color could start.

Day 3: Refreshed our coloring discussion and then they got busy coloring. When the first few were done coloring, I showed my demo of using liquid blue watercolor to do a wash over the entire page. I really made a point to explain that any paper that was showing was going to turn blue so "bad coloring" would be really visible. Make sure they color the white of their eyes or their will possibly be tears when they turn blue....

  

These just make me so incredibly happy to look at!

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.

2nd Grade Warm and Cool Waves (2015)

To hit the 2nd grade curriculum of a contemporary artist and a social artist I introduced them to Robert Wyland. They were pretty pleased to do an artist that was still alive :) Project came from here via Pinterest.

A little background on my project choice...for those of you in the Educator Effectiveness world (EE) our SLO as an Elementary Art team is one that travels with a group of students from 1st to 4th. Last year it was based on Primary/Secondary Colors, this year Warm/Cool and next year will be Complementary. Therefore, I needed to do a project about this time of year that used warm and cool colors to help reinforce!

I Can Statements: I Can tell you something about Wyland. I Can identify warm and cool colors. I can paint a sunset with warm and wave with cool colors.

Day 1: Critique O'Keeffe Leaves, Intro Wyland, artist book, Wyland inspired drawings.

Wrapped up our O'Keeffe project with a group hamburger critique (more on that later), and moved on to learning about Wyland. Because he is still alive there are some awesome resources out there... we watched a few video clips to help learn about him...

Wyland: 100 Whaling Walls Intro from The Wyland Foundation on Vimeo.

He really allows for great discussion about what inspires people to paint different things and I had some really great conversations with students about this. Wrapped up intro day with free drawing ocean artwork...

Day 2: Intro Warm and Cool Colors. Drawing and painting wave (cool colors).
Had a few slides showing the separation of Warm and Cool and the trick of associating fire and water to the two groups to help remember them. Used this Youtube video as well..

Then they started drawing and painting the wave. I had them do pencil first and trace in black oil pastel. For paint, I really wanted them to play mad-scientist mixing wise to understand that the cool colors all "like each other" so I used really watered tempera paint. I gave them teal, blue, purple, and green to share as a table and then their own mixing cup. Because the paint was so watery craftsmanship was a big problem for some 2nd graders.

Day 3: Review Warm and Cool. Painting sunset (warm colors).
We did two quick review games before they moved on to painting the warm colored sunset. In my last district we had a ton of donated paper of all different color varieties so I made 6x6 laminated squares of basically every color I had. Our first review game was me turning around really fast with a color and they had to do "Brrrrr" arms if it was cool and fan themselves off it was warm. Next I passed out the squares randomly and they had to sort themselves into Warm and Cool.

After our review they painted the sunset. We traced a circle lid with a warm colored pencil to be the sun and then worked our way from yellow to red and mixing in between to paint the sunset. They used the watered down tempera again for this in red, yellow, and orange.

REALLY love how these turned out and all the different varieties in the waves. Plus they were totally psyched to be doing so much mixing.

Adaptive Art: Line and Shape (2015)

This was a quick one day project I did with my High School Adaptive Art group. For the life of me I cannot find the pin on Pinterest that inspired this. But it was not my own :)

I did this earlier on in the year for a good test to see where my group of students were at technically. You can see it's a pretty big scale of skill, which makes planning difficult but always fun!

We worked on 12x18 paper. I had them trace different shapes that I had previously cut and then draw at least three lines from one side to another breaking up the shapes. They used watercolors to paint each new shape that was created by the lines. Oil pastels were used for the shapes and lines to help keep them inside the shapes when they painted.

3rd Grade Indian Elephants (2015)

In my district, the Elementary Art curriculum for 3rd Grade is World Cultures. Each year it is alternated between the Eastern and Western Hemisphere. My goal is to give my students the biggest picture of a culture or country I can in a one project time frame. I came up with framing my lesson in a way that gives them small background knowledge and then connecting one of those background pieces to artmaking. It really is a fun process for me because I am learning things I didn't know before about these parts of the world when I research for the lesson. To help my students track their new found knowledge, each time we "travel" to a new place I have them fill out a passport page. You can read more about this process from this post.

One of the first places I had my 3rd graders "travel" to was India. Indian elephant projects are all over Pinterest (via here, here, and here) which gave me a good idea of what I wanted to do.

I Cans Statements: I Can tell you something about India. I Can plan designs for my elephant and use them when creating my elephant. I Can create an elephant inspired by the Holi Festival in India. 

Day 1: Intro to India, passport, and elephant planning.

We started by looking at the flag, looking at India on a map (love using google for this because it becomes interactive) and determining if it's closer to China or the United States. Then we move on to the 5 facts!

1. India has 1.2 billion people, the United States has 320 million and is larger in area.

2. Because of pollution, breathing the air in Mumbai, India, for just one day, is almost the same as smoking 100 cigarettes.

3. 70% of the world's spices come from India.

4. The Hindu festival of Holi celebrates the victory of good over evil.

5. Elephants are very important to India because of India’s cultural history and Hinduism.

I try to mix in religion, interactions with other parts of the world, and something mind blowing in the facts. That way, I'm giving a bigger span of information for them to connect to and giving them something to remember. I always use the last fact to branch into our project.

We looked at photographs of Elephants embellished and painted for Holi and talked about how people might feel about doing this to animals and watched clips of the Elephants... 

After they filled out their passport page, they started planning out how they were going to decorate their elephants using this sheet...

Day 2: Creating the elephant.

Before we kicked off the day I showed this for a little inspiration...

Did a draw along for the Elephant on 3 different sizes of construction paper. A full 12x18 for the head and trunk (no ears), a 12x12 for the body, and a 12x6 folded in 1/2 for the ears. I had the sheet below for them to follow along with or work independently.

After drawing the pieces out the rest of the time was theirs to cut, glue, and continue planning.

Day 3 & 4: Designing and Embellishing. Passport wrap up. 

They spend the next two classes using oil pastels to design their elephants and a bunch of fun things to add some glitz and glam. Their goal when designing their elephant was to actually use their sketches. I really emphasized this and actually included it in their grade. For the embellishing I had three areas set up with trays of all different things they could use and tacky glue. We really spent a lengthy amount of time talking about how sometimes "less it more", a concept easily forgotten in Elementary School.

Their last job was to complete their passport for India.