Starry Night Pumpkin Patch art lesson for kindergartners

Starry Night Pumpkin Patch

Students love van Gogh, especially his "Starry Night" painting. 

On the first day I did a guided lesson on how to make pumpkins appear round. Students were then provided with a paper plate of yellow and red to make orange on their pumpkins (they first outlined their pumpkins with a sharpie).

  

On the second day we talked about the "Starry Night" painting and how van Gogh used short brush strokes. Students were instructed to use both dark and light green oil pastels to color the pumpkin patch. We then added wind, stars and a moon to the sky. . 

Students cut their pumpkins out and glued them to their papers. The final step was to add stems and vines with oil pastels. 

African Paper Masks 1st grade art lesson

African Paper Masks

Children love this lesson. I did this last year with my first graders but I had them add feathers and other art materials. Big mistake with my kiddos. I had them tape the raffia and feathers but  they had so much trouble with this part that I decided to scrap it and have this years kiddos just make the paper mask part.
We discussed masks from African and how they all have symmetry.
Students traced a paper mask pattern from Roylco on to their choice of colored construction paper (only natural colors).

Some of the kiddos needed help cutting out the eyes but most of them did okay.
The last part was to decorate them with oil pastels.

Lions with Lines art lesson for kindergarten

Lions with Lines kindergarten art lesson

I actually found this lesson from Mrs. G's art blog. Here is the link http://mjgds.org/classrooms/art/2016/09/26/kindergarten-lions-with-lines/

I  just changed it a bit.  I was looking for a lesson I could link to the artist Henri Rousseau and this looked like it fit our needs. 

I showed the edited version of Art with Mati and Dada -Henri Roussea on YouTube. Play the edited version! The original shows the painting that has a nude.

I then showed the children how to make a lion from the letter U.

Students then painted their lions with yellow paint. 

This took around 50 minutes. 

On the second day I showed the video "Lines" by Scratch Garden on YouTube. We discussed various lines and then students drew various ones with oil pastels around their lion face to create a mane.

I read the book "The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau" and discussed his jungle paintings and how the animals are hiding among the plants. 

Students were given green rectangles to draw leaves. We discussed how to use the whole paper to make big leaves. 

Great introduction to teaching students lines!

square 1 fundraiser art lesson for 1st grade

1st grade butterfly lesson

I did this lesson for our annual art fundraiser. I'm hoping parents will love these and order a lot of things with their kids art on them! If you aren't familiar with Square 1 Art, you send your students art to the company (they supply the paper) and then they send them back to you with their art on free stickers. Students can see what their art looks like printed.  Parents are encouraged to order things on-line but they can also send in a check to the school. In the past, most of the parents do it on-line. It's so much easier if they do!

 For  this actual lesson, students drew butterflies in the middle of their papers (we discussed symmetry), colored with Crayola color sticks and then painted the background with liquid watercolors.

This is the video of me teaching it during COVID so I would have changed it a bit.