Mondrian Creatures (2015)

Mondrian can be a little boring but this project always puts a fun twist on him that keeps students engaged...check out my original lesson here with links to where I got the original idea. I also did another awesome Mondrian project with my old 5th graders that you can check out here.

I Can tell you something about the artist Piet Mondrian
I Can name the primary colors
I Can create a creature out of a Mondrian inspired painting

Day 1: Intro to Mondrian including using the awesome video below....

After filling out their artist page they set up their papers so they were ready to paint next class. They each had a 9x12 piece of paper and had to draw at least 3 vertical and horizontal lines that touched each side. They also added more lines that didn't go all the way across to make for a more interesting composition. I did this with them using my document camera and we really focused on using our ruler correctly to get straight lines.

Day 2: Another AWESOME video. Review of primary colors. Then painting the primaries.

This video is probably their favorite.

For painting the primaries, I had each individual primary color of tempera paint on 2 tables and students moved to the color they needed to use. (A simple easy way to incorporate movement!)

Day 3: ANOTHER awesome video. Painting the black lines and practicing their creature.

For painting the black lines, I had multiple widths of flat brushes for them to use for more line variety. When they finished they got a 9x12 scratch paper to practice drawing whatever they were going to turn their painting into. Students that were absent somewhere in this process used a thick sharpie to draw their black lines instead of painting, this really helped to catch them up.

Day 4: ONE MORE awesome video. Creating the creature day one.

This one is MY favorite.

On the back of their paintings they drew their creature as big as possible and cut it out. I had all colored scraps, silver paper, string, and sharpies for them to add more details.

Day 5: They were bummed I didn't have one more video. A second workday to create their creature, fill out their second part of their artist page, and do the mondrian extension activity.

Anyone else have a fun project they do with Mondrian besides just the classic painting like him?

3rd Grade Australian Aboriginal Dot Art (2015)

3rd Grade's Elementary Art curriculum of world cultures allowed me to "travel" with them to Australia to learn about the country and create some Australian Aboriginal Dot Art!

This project came from the ever brilliant Mrs. Nguyen over at her blog.

I Can statements: I Can tell you something about Australia. I Can create an artwork in the style of Aboriginal Dot Art.

As i've mentioned in other 3rd grade "travels" my goal is to give my students the biggest picture of a culture or country as 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. 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.

Day 1: Intro to Australia, passport, animal practice, and set up.

We started by looking at the Australian flag, looking at Australia on a map, and then 5 facts about Australia!

1. Australia has over 10,000 beaches. You could visit a new beach every day for 27 years
2. There are more kangaroos than people in Australia
3. There is a lake in Australia called Lake Hillier that is known for its pink color
4. The top 10 deadliest snakes can be found in Australia
5. Australian Aboriginals make artwork using dots to tell stories about their tribes and land.

Obviously the fact we dived into the most was about the Aboriginals. I was trying to get them to use textual clues to figure what Aboriginals meant and we finally got it! However, their favorite fact was probably the pink lake!

We watched part of this documentary from 37:02 to 40:23 as an introduction to the Aboriginal culture and their dot art.

Then the first part of their passports were filled out and it was time to start working. I provided them with the handout below and then they practiced different animals they wanted to create. When they had one down comfortably they drew it on a 6x9 piece of bright construction paper, cut it out, and glued it to a 9x12 piece of black construction paper.

Day 2: Starting the Dots!

Kicked off the day with another short video...

After the demo they got to work making dots like machines! Some students had to finish drawing and cutting their animals before creating dots. Each table had a pallette with a full set of colors and enough scratch art sticks for each color. They used the back flat end of the sticks to create the dots. We talked about using just the right amount of paint and how many dots were just enough before dipping again and what the best way to go about laying down dots was. The first workday everyone was really focused and into it....

Day 3 & 4: Workdays!

Started off each day with a little review about what we remembered from Australia and then they got to work. As time went on they started to lose motivation and focus but not finishing was not an option. I did allow friends to help (if they wanted help) once we got down to the last few minutes on the last workday.

 When they were finally done the last job was finishing their passport and turning in their project.

I am so proud of their perseverance and quality that came out of this and REALLY glad I didn't go bigger than 9x12. I am thinking next time that early finishers could do a really big group one!

Looking for feedback on two things....

Do you think it was okay that I "made" them finish and not quit?

Do you think it was okay that I allowed friends to help (if they wanted) at the end?

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!

Kindergarten Talking Cows

When I stumbled upon this project via Pinterest I knew it was perfect for my Kindergarteners. One of my favorite things to explore with Kindergarteners is perspective. We do it in a pretty minimal sense, along the lines of "What would this look like REALLY up close?" but perspective nonetheless.

I Can Statement: I can talk about how things look different from different sides and close up.

Day 1: Read one of the most hilarious books I have ever read. I mean literally laughing out loud the first time I read it.

I knew starting the project I didn't want just black and white cows so I used the "uniqueness" of this cow to say that our cows were also going to be unique by being different colors.

Before we started any drawing I used this lucidpress document that I created to explore how cows can look really different from the front than the side and the nose can look HUGE when they are really close to you. After talking about these differences and watching the youtube video we did a draw along in sharpie only of the cows. While the draw along was happening I talked about different things they could do to make their cows look more unique and different from the other cows even before we added color.

Once the cows were drawn they chose whatever watercolors they wanted for their cow and we all used red tempera paint for the tongues of the cows.

Day 2: Started with another favorite book of mine....

Really great interactive book where you lift the mouths open of each animal and you see the inside of their mouth with their animal sound.

I used the idea of animal sounds and inspiration from our first book to add speech bubbles to the cows. It was a really fun discussion with the kids talking about what speech bubbles were, how they worked, and the kinds of things our cows could say. I love seeing their ideas unfold and build off others.

I had the speech bubbles pre-drawn on cardstock and after they wrote what their cow was saying and cut out the bubble, we glued a piece of cardboard under it to look like it was floating over the paper.

These were so funny hanging next to each other, it looked like they were all having one big conversation....

Complementary Colored Giraffes with 1st & 2nd Grade

I love a good children's book before the start of a lesson or project but towards the end of the year, it gets pretty old reading the same story nine times! So, whenever I find a great online version of a story with animations I am pretty quick to show it to my students. Especially the words are also on the screen during it!

When I decided on giraffes for this lesson on complementary colors the book Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae, was the first thing that popped into my head! It is a fantastic book about a very unique giraffe and what a better way to start an artwork with very unique colored giraffe!

Day 1: Started off with the the digital version of Giraffes Can't Dance, the awesome version I found can be found on vimeo here.

Scholastic Interactive: "Giraffes Can't Dance" from Kat Llewellyn on Vimeo.

After the story we got into how our giraffes were going to be very unique because of their colors and then I did a lesson a complementary colors. I found the best thing in teaching complementary colors is making real world connections. I give examples of where the pairs are being used like sports teams and movies. The obvious favorite was this picture that I stumbled upon...

Let me tell you that none of them forgot the purple and yellow pair of complementary colors.

After we wrapped up the lesson on complementary colors we did a draw along of the giraffe and I gave them a bunch of suggestions of how to make it their own..they drew in sharpie only and then painted the first color in their pair with watercolors for the body.

Day 2: Review of complementary colors and then onto the spots! We used tempera paints for the spots for a little more contrast. When their spots were complete they were instructed to create a border with a second pair of complementary colors in oil pastels.

My plans for next year are to give them an option of any animal with spots or stripes but they will have to do a sketch first to make sure the animal is clear. This is pretty ambitious idea for me for 1st and 2nd graders but i'm feeling hopeful for next year!

Jan Brett's The Mitten with 1st Grade

Any chance I get to make connections to the core classrooms, I do it! When I found out first grade was doing an author study of Jan Brett I knew I had to jump on the chance to do something with one of her books.

I can statement: I can draw an animal from The Mitten using simple shapes

Day 1: The classes heard Jan Brett books from their teachers reading so I was really excited when I found this version of The Mitten read by Jan Brett herself on YouTube to change it up for them...

After the video I told them we were going to change the story by making the mitten decorative instead of white and they spent the rest of the time doing a crayon resist. Drawing a mitten was challenging for my 3rd graders (like crying in frustration challenging) so I made tracers for these kiddos. They could draw whatever they wanted on their mittens in crayon and had to pick one color to do a watercolor wash in over their drawings. If time allowed they practiced drawing the different animals from the story.

Day 2: To prep for this project I found an oval and traced in in the center of a 9x12 piece of paper for each of them to use as a starting point for their drawing. I made a drawing of each animal in the story using that same oval as the base and had the oval in red and the rest of the drawing in black so they could see how it was transformed into the different animals. I will dig them out and add a picture to add to the post later. I also did a demo for each of the more challenging ones on the document camera. I knew Jan Brett's beautiful illustrations might be hard for the kiddos to translate into their own drawings so I found a clip art version of each animal that simplified them and was easy to identify an oval as the base shape.

They chose one of the animals to be inside their mitten and after they were done drawing and coloring they cut both out, glued to black paper, and added some yarn for detailing on the mitten.


I selected this one to be on display for Youth Art Month at the library and I know it will be popular given that our Wisconsin Badgers are going to dominate in March Madness....

Here are more from each building, I am so happy they choose a variety of animals so I didn't end up getting 80 bunnies...

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Colored Pencil Surprise! (3rd & 4th)

As a new teacher there are things I see almost every day that still surprise me (pretty sure it is the same for old teachers too)! When I saw the colored pencil skills of some of my 3rd and 4th grade students, I was taken back seeing them used so poorly! While I am a fan BIG FAN of crayons, and usually choose them over any other "basic level" art materials, I love the possibilities of colored pencils. It is pretty endless. SO, I needed to do a project where students could hone their skills with colored pencils and become better artists because of it. I instantly thought back to one of my favorite projects I did while teaching during my long-term sub job. I did the project with 2nd graders then, and was excited to see what my 3rd and 4th graders would do. As far as I know this is a project of my own creation (maybe a little influence from this via Pinterest), I called the project "Complete the Animals" and you can see why! Here are a few that I chose for the spring art show.

I CAN statement for the project: I CAN use colored pencils to the best of my ability by using blending.

Day 1: Intro to project. Because I had plenty of photographed examples of this project from my long-term job I tried something new at the start of this project. I showed some student examples and we talked about strengths and weakness in the pieces. Basically a critique, a very simple one. One of the focuses in that conversation was coloring. How neat was it? How many colors? Coloring in one direction or many? And, the other big focus was the setting of the animal. We talked about using the setting that was in the picture versus not using it, amount of details, etc. I loved the way it went. I think because it was work of students whom they didn't know at all, and not to mention 2nd grade instead of the same grades, it seemed like they were more comfortable discussing it. Here are two pieces we looked at.

Before they got started I demonstrated blending with colored pencils and what sitiations they might use it in. We also talked about other "higher level" skills like coloring certain directions in different places for different effects. They had to complete a few samples of blending before they could choose an animal. I previously clipped 60 or so pictures from the interent and printed them off in color 4x6 just on regular copy paper. I had enough variety that no one was heartbroken about the selections. The first direction was to cut off part of the animal (at least as wide as your finger) and attach the picture to the paper. Then it was up to them how they approached the rest of the drawing.

Day 2: Reminders about blending and good practice for using colored pencil and then workday. If the colored pencil work was finished they used sharpies to outline and matched best color possible since I don't have all the fancy colored sharpies. We skipped the sharpie on some depending on the style they colored in like this guy, sharpie would of really took away the beauty of those trees!

Day 3: Almost all students finished and did shape animal challenge if time remained.

Kennedy Elementary...

A little 3D action. Love that this student took the initiative to do this!

McDill Elementary...

As my stragglers finish, we have been adding... 

Jefferson Elementary...