Underwater Unit with 1st Grade

After reflecting on this unit, I have concluded that it is very enriching.

There are several ways to do this project….which is something I’ve been experimenting with for the past 5 years. Since I’ve been teaching, I have always taught some kind of underwater themed project. This year with the first graders I have even been experimenting within the grade level. Some classes tried a ‘salt painting’ technique with tempera paints which was subtle but still interesting for the background. Others used tempera paints to mix cool colors…which turned out to be my favorite.

We also dabbled in GYOTAKU, the ancient Japanese art of printing fish. Gyo meaning fish and taku meaning impression or rubbing. (Keyword: rubbing…that works best.)

Day One:

Painting the background with cool colors.

Here you see some of the salt painting in action. They used a lot of salt! It was messy.

I prefer the plate of tempera paint for this background….I used white, green, blue and purple.

Day Two:

Creating like Matisse…drawing with scissors to collage seaweed and coral reefs into the middleground.

Day Two or Three:  Gyotaku

This year I finally bought those rubber fish for Gyotaku! I have really enjoyed this process and found the best way for me…

Here’s how I set up my “Gyotaku Table”…whoever sits here just merged into other tables for the class period….luckily I had enough space to do that.

The first day I experimented with black tempera paint (cause I was afraid of the mess..) and let the kids pick the fish up to print it onto their paper. That was really really messy.

The next class I tried this with, we used brayers with black printmaking ink. We pressed and rubbed our paper into the fish…this was much better. I realize this is the ‘correct’ way to do it, but I had to at least try the other way. Their prints still turned out okay, but the detail was way better with the ink.

“Pirana”

Printmaking Intro for 1st Grade

Printmaking

We are studying printmaking with foam plates and incised lines. To introduce this concept we made a 'mini-plate' with an image of a fish. They stamped their fish in their idea books first to get the hang of the process, then created a pen drawing of a habitat. We used peeled crayons so that we could color lightly and quickly, then printed our mini-fish into our habitat using markers. They turned out great for a 15-20 minute project!

Here's an Idea Book with one of our graphic organizers. I usually have them make word webs because for me this is the easiest way to organize information quickly. Pretty great for first graders.

Printmaking Day Two

This whole project was inspired by a deepspacesparkle lesson for 3rd graders. Instead of using brayers and messy ink, I have borrowed the idea of just using paint. SO much easier, especially with a room full of 1st graders.

First, we used 'cool color watercolors' to paint a watery habitat for our fish. They could be as creative as they wanted. Usually, I'm a stickler for not leaving any white paper showing, but I'm starting to loosen up on that. Anyway, after they painted I demonstrated how to incise their fish into their 'large foam plate'. (Teacher prep: cut up styrofoam plates if you are on a budget! Super cheap!)

So while our paintings were drying, they lightly drew their fish on the plate in pen. We started out light so we could make changes to our fish before incising the lines permanently. Once they were happy with their drawing, we traced over our lines with lots of pressure, but not too much! Don't want to poke through to the other side.

Finally, we used 'warm color tempera paint' to apply color to the fish, then we printed the fish at least 3 times into the environment. They are turning out great! Some are better than others, but I'm happy they are understanding the process of printmaking.