Georgia O'Keeffe flowers in 4th grade

 Georgia O'Keeffe flowers in 4th grade

We started off the lesson by viewing the many examples of Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers. I found a great video on YouTube for kids about her career and life to show the kids as well. 

Students were provided with various examples of flowers to choose from for their drawings. They could draw the whole flower or just part of it. I made viewfinders that they could use to help them pick and draw which section they wanted to use. 

Students sketched out their designs, colored them with oil pastels, and then painted the background with watercolors. I was surprised by how they enjoyed this lesson, and they are beautiful!

Kindergarten poppies

Kindergarten poppies

Here is another great idea I found from another  art teacher, Suzanne Tiedemann who teaches at Brunswick Elementary School. I just adapted it a bit to fit the needs of my kindergartners. 

We discussed the beautiful poppy paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe as well as viewing a clip of The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy and the rest of the characters are walking in a field of poppies. Boy were they excited to see this short video clip! You can find it on YouTube. 

Students drew short, medium and long stems with oil pastels onto a 12" x 18" piece of navy or blue construction paper. In the original  idea, Ms. Tiedemann used black paper. I chose navy and blue because I was pretty low on black paper.  I then provided a paper plate with red, white and black paint for them to paint their flowers. 

Easy lesson and this was done in one, fifty minute class period.