These scrolls start with a chalk pastel blended background and india ink branches blown out with a straw. Students then used Craypas to create their blossoms and used a small red foam square to create their signature seal. (I wanted to purchase a real signature seal but could not find one so instead I created a seal using an exacto blade and an old pink eraser!) Some classes ended up with extra time so we drew "Stillwater"the panda from the book "Zen Shorts" by Jon Muth. For displaying these lovely projects, I used hot glue to attach popsicle sticks together to ack like a dowel on the top, and glued a single popsicle stick to the bottom to give the scroll a bottom weight. A small red string to hang was the finishing touch.
The 1st Grade students looked at and discussed many different varieties of Asian art. We focused on Asian scrolls. A scroll is a rolled piece of paper which is used to write or paint on to relay information or to be used as decoration. 1st grade students created a decorative scroll with Cherry Blossoms because Cherry Blossoms are popular in Asia. A Cherry Blossom is a type of tree that has lots of little pink flowers on them. In Japan they have an annual celebration to view the Cherry Blossoms. Cherry Blossoms are various colors of pink flowers that bloom only for a couple weeks a year. During this time it is absolutely beautiful because the sidewalks are lined with Cherry Blossom Trees that people are able to walk through to see their beauty. Students were able to view a short video clip to see Cherry Blossom Trees in Japan
2nd grade learned about Japanese Cherry Blossoms- I showed them images of woodblock prints and we found the cherry blossom trees within the...
Day 1: First I introduce Dale Chihuly. I go into explaining how Dale experienced an eye and shoulder injury in a car accident 35 years ago and has been unable to do a lot of the strenuous work involved with being a glassblower. Instead he takes on the role of artist and director leading his crew to creating glass art work worth millions of dollars. We then come up with a million dollar chandelier concept drawing using pencil. We then traced over the pencil lines with sharpie marker. Video Resources: Lesson in Glass Blowing Chihuly at Cheekwood Fire and Water Timelapse Day 2: Intro. warm vs. cool colors and complete and interactive table quiz before we dive into the painting (I give each table a small white board and a dry erase maker. I show them a picture and they must decide if it is mostly a warm or mostly a cool work of art). We them use watercolors (warm or cool) to trace over ever the sharpie lines. If students finished early I tell them to add "double color" and turn their art into a two million dollar concept drawing! Day 3: Review Chihuly and warm vs. cool colors. Trace, outline, and fill in watercolor lines with water soluble oil pastels (premium brand, my favorite!) still using warm or cool colors. Next, cut out drawing and then begin painting water over surface to activate the oil pastels.
Kids will love using cotton balls to create this gorgeous cherry blossom painting! A wonderful spring art project for kids of all ages. Free printable branch template included.
I believe a few other art teachers out there have done something like this before- they turned out so cute! This is a three day lesson. First day, I read the students Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle. That same day I do a step by step drawing of a sea horse as the kids follow along in pencil on white construction paper. They outline their drawing with black crayon or permanent marker would work too. Next class, the take pre-cut tissue squares and overlap them one at a time placing them onto the seahorse, painting over each square with water to get the colors to bleed and the tissue paper to lay flat. Third day, the tissue paper (once dry) falls right off, and they re-use them to cut out fin and spikes. First they cut the seahorse out on their black line, and then they glue it onto a colorful piece of construction paper (their choice). Finally they take a glue stick and outline the head and back of their sea horse, and cut up shapes from their tissue paper to stick onto the glue for fin and spikes.
It's official, ya'll: School's Out for the Summer! And it really truly couldn't have come at a better time. Our school wide art show was a week before the last days of school which was a good thing since I was basically a useless puddle of exhaustion after the fact. I'm just glad that my Stress-Related Art-Show Eyebrow-Twitch finally stopped as I was tired of the dude at Starbucks thinking I was hitting on him. Before I share with ya'll the amazing artwork of my kindergarten through 2nd grade students (3rd and 4th grade kiddos and clay projects to be shared in another photo-laden post), I have just gotta give a great big Thank You! to the dozens of parent volunteers that popped in everyday for two weeks leading up to the art show to hang the artwork. That's right, they hung everything that the kids created all year (my rough estimate was about 2300 masterpieces). I'm super lucky to have such amazing support from the parents of my young artists. Ya'll are the bestest! Okay, without further ado, I present to you the masterpieces outta Kindergartenland! In kindergarten, I like to start the school year with a great big fat unit on line. We sculpt with lines, paint a pattern of lines and create an abstraction of lines. These bright and happy paintings are always a favorite of mine. Another fave this year was clay butterfly sculptures. I really love that crayon/watercolor technique for the little ones. It seemed to add more depth to their texture than glaze would. That painting on the right is another project from our line unit. For Read Across America week, I wore my Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus dress and we created these cuties. This was a big hit with the kids and parents alike. We had a lot of fun trying out our wet-on-wet watercolor skills with this project. Look below and you'll see how they did that in the background of their work. One thing I love about having the parents hang the artwork is that each hangs the pieces a little differently. I find that this makes for more dynamic displays from class to class. Foxy lesson here and Starry Night Collages here. This year, I made signs for the art show that were inspired by that AMAZING art teacher over at Painted Paper. When I saw her post on art show signs, I knew I had to use our stash of leftover painted papers to make my own. Onto the 1st grade artwork. The little ones were so busy this year! One of our most recent masterpieces were these koinobori that we were able to hang in a large bank of windows. Details on that fun and quick lesson here. My 1st grade started the year creating those hilarious Viking Self Portrait collages with Rebecca, my former student teacher (who is RIGHT NOW interviewing for her own art teacher gig, wish her lucky, ya'll!). Details on those Starry Night Collages here and Party Pandas here. Our second round of self-portraits were of a Japanese theme with ourselves dolled up in kimonos. Details on that lesson here. When I was absent for a couple of days attending the NAEA conference in San Diego, I left my "But I'm Not an Artist!" sub directions on teaching the kids to draw these pandas. And, much to her surprise, her drawings, as well as the kids, turned out great! This also meant that I could come back to work with a lesson already started and simply bust out the watercolor paints for the kids to finish them. Details on those ceramic stars to come. One final look at 1st grade before we move onto the... Again, the idea for these signs came from Painted Paper. Each set of signs was hung right above the hallways leading to that grade level. I really loved the work that my 2nd graders created this year. Some of my favorites were their circle loom weavings and their cherry blossom paintings. Every year, I have my 1st through 4th grade students right an autobiography to hang with their artwork. This also proved to be a great sub lesson when I was out for a different occasion. Can't remember what. Booze Cruise, maybe? Wishful thinking. My 2nd grade also took part in the Viking and Kimono fun. We hang ALL the artwork that the kids have created ALL year. Which means that one class can take up a whole lotta wall space. I have yet to find what sticks the best to cinderblocks in the muggy pre-summer heat of our halls. We've tried every kind of tape, that blue sticky stuff by Dapp, double-sided tape by 3M and hot glue. While hot glue works great, it's a headache trying to get it off the walls. Next school year, I'm begging and pleading for more cork strips. Paper marbling was a fast and fun project to teach about the Japanese art of Suminagashi. I liked this lesson so much, I blogged about it twice. I've always struggled with a circle loom weaving lesson where I loved the results as much as the kids did the process. In the past, we wove on CD's and unpainted white plates. The results were fine...but when we painted the plates this year, it seemed to take the weaving to a whole new level. And there you have it, ya'll! The 2-dimentional masterpieces by kindergarten through 2nd grade. Stay tuned in the next coupla weeks as I share the rest of the art show as well as lessons with ya. Until then, how do you know it's officially summer? Well, it's 1pm and I'm still in my pajamas! May your days be filled with pjs and craft projects, teachery folk! For the rest of ya, take a day or three off, you've earned it. Tell your boss a crazy art teacher said so!
Day 1: We learned about Japan and practiced drawing koi fish on half sheets of white drawing paper that we then colored. Day 2: Talked about organic vs. geomagnetic and warm vs. cool colors. Students folded the koi practice drawing in half and on the back side drew a line down the middle. One side was drawn on with organic lines and shapes, while the other was drawn on with geometric lines and shapes. Once the drawing was done, we used crayons to color one side in with warm colors and the other with cool. Day 3: We reviewed warm vs. cool colors and organic vs. geometric shapes. Students drew a large final koi fish on stiff paper. The koi's body was drawn in with organic or geometric shapes. Students could then choose warm or cool colored crayons to fill in the drawn shapes. Crayons must be drawn with very hard to get a good coat of wax. Day 4: We finished coloring fish and then used a flat foam brush to paint a light coat of black tempera over the entire koi drawing. Day 5: FINALLY we got to scratch! Using overlapping half circles (or "Smiley's") students created scales and added fish details. If students finished early I had them work on a mural pond painting for our fish to be displayed on! yippie, a fun project!
I had posted about these projects in progress a couple weeks ago. Here are the finished products!
CHERRY BLOSSOM ART PROJECT This gorgeous cherry blossom art activity is great for preschoolers and elementary grades to make for a spring art project. There are two different vase templates for children to choose between. A vase is decorated with a blue marker to resemble a blue and white Japanese porcelain vase. The vase is cut out and glued on light blue construction paper. Then children paint on the cherry blossom stems with black paint coming out of their vase. The art project is completed with children gluing pink tissue paper cherry blossoms all over the branches. For time constraints I recommend this cherry blossom art project as a two-day project. On the first day decorate the vase, cut it out and glue it onto the construction paper. On the second day paint on the branches and glue on the cherry blossoms. The beautiful cherry blossom art project is a great craft to hanging on a classroom bulletin board or art wall for spring. Included with the vase templates is how-to instructions and helpful tutorial photos. We also have a step by step video on our website for how to make the art project. MORE PRODUCTS YOU'LL LOVE: Paper Plate Easter Egg Wreath Art Project Black Glue & Watercolor Kite Art Project Birds on a Wire Art Project Terms of Use All content in this product is copyrighted property of I Heart Crafty Things. You are welcome to use this template for personal or classroom use. You may not sell or in any way profit from the electronic file. You may not store or distribute the file in any other website or another location where people may download it (ex. Dropbox, Facebook groups, 4Shared).
We have been exploring various artists and the beauty of nature. My 3rd graders created these GORGEOUS still life paintings inspired by the artist, Natalia Goncharova. Natalia Goncharova was a pain…
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a work-in-progress painted tree project by my second grade students (ya'll can visit here for the full post as it will cover everything I'm about to skip) and I'm excited to say these masterpieces are now complete! After learning about Japan's cherry blossom trees and their lovely blooms which are cause for celebration, the kids painted blossoms on both their practice paper and their watercolor painting. Because their practice papers were just as lovely as the finished product, I had the children matte and frame both works of art today. But before I get to that, let's chat about how we went about painting those blossoms. The children were to paint on their practice paintings first until they were comfortable painting on their watercolor painting. For the blossoms, the kids had a light pink, a dark pink and yellow. I showed the kids how to completely dunk their brush into the dark pink, put just the tip of the brush in the light pink and lay the brush flat on their paper and wiggle it to create each flower petal. Loading the brush with that much paint meant that they could paint one whole flower without reloading their brush. Once that paint had dried a pinch, the kids used q-tips to add the yellow paint to the center. After they were comfortable painting on their practice paper, the kids added blossoms to their watercolor paintings. The kids loved those practice paintings so much they were constantly asking if they could take them home (because they know I hoard all their work until the end of the year for the art show, they don't even bother to ask if they can take their watercolors home. Poor kids!). I kept thinking maybe I'd come up with something to do with those practice paintings so I asked them to leave them in the art room. And I'm glad I did. They look just as lovely framed as the watercolor paintings, I think! The above is an example of a practice painting... And this is the artist's final piece. It's interesting how some children really followed their practice paintings to the point that they match their final product and how other kids completely changed their plans along the way. I made sure to tell them that it was just "practice" and that they could create something totally different on their final piece. But I'm blabbering. Let's chat about how we framed these, ermkay? The kids used a 12" X 18" sheet of white construction paper as their background frame. I cut a ton of large origami paper (purchased through Sax by the brand Roylco) and cut it down to 2" X 12" strips. The kids glued their chosen origami papers to the top and bottom of the white paper. And then, because I had visions of them haphazardly mounting their watercolor piece all crooked in the middle, I had them use a ruler to measure one inch in for their watercolor paper. And then I gave myself a big ole pat on the back for including math into the lesson...even if it was just for an inch. Once both practice papers and final paintings were framed and on the drying rack our 30 minutes of art were up. I didn't even get to see these lovelies in all their colorful glory until this afternoon when I was taking them off the drying rack. Oh! Can I please ask your thoughts on something? So, this painting you see here? The one with the super detailed sky? It took this artist about 3 classes to complete (that's right, an hour and a half). Now. I totally relate to my slower working artists as I'm a very slower artist myself. Which is why I struggle so much in workshops. I need time to: 1. Process the directions; 2. Think of an idea that I love; 3. Put my idea together in some sort of way that I'm happy with. In workshops I rarely make it past #1 when I notice that my peers are already well into #2. And I hate that! I get all uptight and anxious and who can create like that?! For that reason, I always let my slower students work at their own pace...almost to a fault. But I want them to feel comfortable creating and never feel that stress that I often do. So, art teachers: what do you do in these situations? Do you hold your students to a set time frame and move on? If I do that then I have these beautiful half finished pieces. Or do you allow those students to continue working...and if you do, what do your early finishers do? Mine have been content with our current options of origami, free draw on dry erase boards or reading a book with me. Just curious what you do in these situations. I was told that the little black specks were the pollen coming off the flowers. And viola! Cherry Blossom Tree Paintings by Second Grade complete!
Spring Fingerprint Tree is a simple art project for kids! If you love cherry blossom crafts or season craft, this is perfect for your kindergarten classroom!
