Mixed Media Treehouse Collage with 1st Grade

Oh I love these treehouses...not sure who I stole this idea from, so I'm not claiming it as my own...just a wonderful project for 1st graders.

I break this down into 3 days...day one painting the landscape/background...day two building the tree and adding leaves/flowers/apples we read "The Apple Pie Tree" and day three is creating the tree house and ladder.

Kindergarten Art Book: 4th 9 Weeks Project

I borrowed this wonderful idea from a fellow metro art teacher and this is my favorite end of the year project for Kindergarten. It's perfect for one day projects that are small and easy to store. After we make about 5-6 pages, we put them all together and the kids take their books home. 

Day One: Cover Page "My Art Book" 

I just used Word to create the layout for the pages...and I print copies for the kids to draw on. It's an easy to get good info on the page for them...then we glue these to a piece of 9"x 12" colorful construction paper. 

Day Two: "Cool Cat/Hot Dog"

The kids love this page...they love to paint with watercolors, but they always get a kick out of the phrasing. We have to review warm and cool colors then we draw the animals together. They get to outline with sharpie then paint. 

I'll have to go take more photos of the remaining pages...but you get the idea. 

Day Three: "Piet Mondrian Collage with Primary Colors"

Day Four: "The Very Hungry Caterpillar with Secondary Colors"

Day Five: "Symmetrical Butterfly" 

Day Six: "About the Artist" - Assemble books

Fantasy Unit with 4th Grade

For this unit, we discussed "fantasy"...

We watched a Brain Pop video about J.R.R Tolkien and learned how to draw dragons and build castles using various clay techniques like coiling and throwing slabs.

 

I wanted us to glaze these castles, however we did this at the end of the year and something always comes up...so we ended up doing a quick paint job with tempera. I gave them a "pattern" challenge....some of them came up with some lovely patterns.