Royal Kinders

This a new idea for this year...I don't usually do such a detailed self-portrait with my little kinders, but I found this via deepspacesparkle.com and I couldn't resist. I will say the addition of the crown template for them to trace was a great starting point.

Day one we drew with pencil and outlined with oil pastel, and today we started painting with tempera cakes...they are looking really nice!

1st Grade Self-Portraits

Each year, 1st grade starts the year with a self-portrait. This year we changed a few things....we outlined with black (looks so much better!) and we added texture rubbings to our backgrounds.

They look great!

After we added pattern backgrounds with texture plates, we painted the shirt and background with tempera cakes.

 

 

 

Peacocks, peafowl, penhens and more (last year)

2nd grade made these beautiful peacock paintings at the end of last year and I never had a chance to blog about it.

So here they are!

Special thanks to Patty from deepspacesparkle.com for this idea: http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2010/04/15/peacock-art-project-for-first-grade/

I figured out the best sequence for my 2nd graders is:
Day one: draw the peacock, draw lines for feathers (no circles yet) and paint the body with metallic tempera.

I gave each table 3 cups of paint: blue, teal and green

Oil pastel designs on the feathers before gluing the circles down really looks good...

Day two: Draw concentric circles or "eyes of the gods" could talk about India and significance of the peacock....and paint those concentric circles on a separate piece of white paper. While those are drying, paint the feathers with same blues, greens and teals from concentric circles.

Then cut out 'eyes' and glue around feathers!

Super easy and beautiful!

Kindergarten and Kandinsky

Lines galore!...and yes, I'm crazy, I have kindergarten painting already...they are suprisingly occupied and happy. :)

First we talk about line....and they echo my lines but they choose the color...

We used oil pastels so we could make 'the magic of oil pastel resist'...

Day Two: Watercolor procedures and demo

And they're off to paint....the art challenge is to leave no white space.

Some of these look very landscapy which is neat...

But our main focus is line and color influenced by Wassily Kandinsky.

"Watercolor (No.13) in 1913" Wassily Kandinsky

http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-207.php

(Borrowed image from this website)

Idea Books and Name Tag Designs

I have each kid, 1st through 4th, decorate their Idea Book cover and they create a name tag for their table. This is a great warm-up activity for them to get used to using art supplies appropriately, practice procedures, and I can get a visual assessment of what I'm working with for the year!

We use the Idea Books just about everyday...this is a great way to incorporate writing into my lessons and it gives them something to take home at the end of the year.

4th grade got to collage their idea book cover with maps, books and newspapers

usually i just staple white paper together and make a word document cover sheet for them to decorate, but lucky for us this year we got an awesome donation of all these paper swatch booklets with like 30 blank white pages inside...awesome idea books!

using mod podge to adhere the paper to the cover