1st grade Clay hearts

 1st Grade Clay hearts 

This lesson is great for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day or Christmas.

 Each student was provided with a ball of clay which they rolled into a slab. I provided handouts of hearts which they then traced around with a clay sculpture tool.

Students could add textures with various tools provided such as paint combs and textured rolling pins. The last step was to carve out a hole for a string. 

These only took a few days to dry so the following week students painted their hearts. I don't have a kiln so students used Crayola air dry clay. Acrylic paint works the best for providing bright colors but it is risky with this age group. I did have some students use tempera paint but the results were dull even after I sprayed them with acrylic gloss spray. If you can, try to use the acrylic paint. I do have aprons for all the students. 

After they were dry I sprayed them outside with gloss spray. With donations of bubble wrap from parents I wrapped all of them, added a string and sent them home. Hopefully they all made it without breaking! My students were so proud of them! 

3rd grade Andy Warhol oil pastel cupcakes

 3rd grade Andy Warhol cupcakes 

I started off the lesson with a brief introduction to pop art and the art of Andy Warhol especially noting his cupcake art. 

As a class I taught them how to draw a basic cupcake on a 6" x 4 1/2" piece of paper. They cut their cupcake out and then traced it on a 12" x 9" piece of multi media paper (after they folded it into fours). 

Students colored each cupcake a different flavor using oil pastels. The last step was to outline them with a black oil pastel and paint each box with watercolors. I love how they turned out! 

2nd grade Claude Monet watercolor resist

 2nd Grade Monet watercolor lilies with bridge

I showed the video  about the life of Claude Monet on YouTube. The one I used was "Claude Monet for Kids, Art History for Kids".  We discussed his life and I shared with the students various photos of his Japanese bridge with waterlily paintings. 

                                                          The Water Lily Pond, 1899 by Claude Monet

Students drew a bridge in the middle of their 9" x 12" multi media paper and lily pads with various shades of green pastels.  Quickly they covered their paper with water and brushed blue and purple liquid watercolors all over it. My 2nd graders then sprinkled salt all over their painting before it dried. The salt will soak up some of the paint and leave flakes of water glistening through the water like light. 

The last step was to glue squares of tissue paper on the lily pads. 

4th grade Gelli printing

 

4th Grade Gelli print flowers 

My fourth graders had so much fun creating these gelli print flowers. Actually their favorite part was making the prints. I'm a multi media artist and I use my gelli plate all the time to create various colored and printed papers for my art. I use acrylic paint and with my first class of fourth graders that is what I used. Clean up was not easy for these kiddos so for my next three fourth grade classes we used tempera paint. The results were fine and my sanity was saved!  

Students could use rice paper, copier paper or pages from an old dictionary that I had torn out for them. 

Each table was designated with a certain color so students had to rotate to the color they wanted. 

On day two, students made their background with blue, white and purple. They could roll the paint with a  brayer or use a paint brush. Most everyone used the brayers and some even splattered paint onto their art. Students also had time to create a couple more prints using greens for the stems and leaves to use for their flower collage

For the next couple of classes, students created their flowers. We used fine tip bottles filled with tempera paint for them to add various lines around their flowers. They loved using them!

This lesson took four, fifty minute class periods.