Superhero Staff

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird….it’s a plane….no – it’s West Central Hartford Elementary Staff!

First grade students have been working on a comic book character theme in art, drawing faces and body proportions. Each student was assigned a staff person from Hartford Elementary as well as transportation employees throughout the district. 
We talked about how the staff at West Central Hartford Elementary had superhero powers and how those superhero powers help students everyday at school. 

Students looked closely at the photo of their assigned staff person and drew comic book facial features. Students, then added a superhero body with cape and details to the background to give clues to the staff person's job. The comic superhero portraits will be shared with staff and hang on display in the lunch room.

Action Painting in the ART room!

I love giving students an opportunity to experiment with interesting and unique painting tools and processes. With action painting, my students (first grade and kindergarten) use the primary colors as well as black and white paint and apply it to both small and large papers with spatulas, rollers, toy cars and trucks, eye droppers, toothbrushes, and paint brushes. This can make for an incredibly messy week, not only for students, but also for me, as you can see from the photo below.  For all parents, the paint is tempera and washable!

I would have to say that this is the most memorable weeks in art for most students, something that makes the end of the year more exciting and adventurous.  We also learn about an artist who is most famous for his works in action painting, Jackson Pollock. This video gives great insight into who he was as an artist as well as a person.

One more day of Action Painting for the week! I hope you enjoy all the photos of students outside participating in splatter paint. It was a beautiful day to be outside!

Printed Cityscapes

First graders continued with the cityscape theme and learned a relief printing technique using styrofoam sheets (a relief print is a print from raised images). We reviewed shapes and lines we would see in a cityscape such as rectangles, squares, triangles, straight lines, horizontal, diagonal, and vertical. Then, students planned their drawings on 6"x9" copy paper (same size paper as styrofoam sheets). Once competed with their cityscape plan, students then taped the drawing to the top of the styrofoam sheet and began tracing their pencils lines with an incredibly sharp pencil. The difficulty with this part of the assignment was making sure students applied enough pressure with the pencil to transfer an indentation into the styrofoam sheet. Sometimes, the planned drawing would tear as students transferred their lines. This was perfectly normal.

After all pencil lines were transferred to the styrofoam sheet, students then inked their styrofoam sheets with black water based block printing ink using a brayer, printing the image three times,  and re-inking after each print for good contrast.

As a class, we discussed how artists sign and number prints. Artists use numbers very similar to fractions when signing. Most students signed their print with a 1/3. The bottom number represents the total number of prints created. The top number represents one number within the series of prints.

Cityscapes

First graders are experimenting with a variety of materials to create their own cityscapes. After examining a slideshow of various examples of cityscapes created from different materials and brainstorming many objects or items we would see in a city, students are using the following materials at stations to develop their own unique cityscapes.

Newspapers: We discussed how columns of text, headlines, or even rectangular ads can appear like buildings in our mixed media cityscape.

Scrap Paper: Students have a large selection of colored and textured paper to choose from and even wall paper samples to create buildings, windows, or other elements within our cityscape.

Magazines: As students are looking through the magazines, we discuss proportion and how some images such as people may be too large for our cityscape and appear like giants next to our buildings. So, students are looking for images to cut out that would fit within our cityscape theme proportionately.

Chalk and Oil Pastels: Details can be added by drawing with the chalk and oil pastels. I am noticing most students are using these two materials to create their sky or enhance their newspaper or scrap paper buildings.

Cardboard Printing: Scraps of cardboard cut in various sizes can create the straight lines that we would see on buildings and skyscrapers within a cityscape. Students tap one side of the cardboard in black paint and stamp the cardboard on their paper to create rectangles, squares, and triangles for buildings, windows and doors within their cityscape. The goal is to create lines with cardboard not to paint and fill inside the buildings like a brush.

As students are working at each station to build their cityscape, we discuss how materials such as newspaper and magazines can overlap to create various areas of space within our mixed media art. By overlapping newspaper on top of our cardboard printing, some areas of our cityscape will appear up close while other areas will recede into the background.

Returning from Winter break

Two simple drawings from memory I consistently assign after break include student's favorite Christmas gift and favorite Winter break activity. These drawings give us an opportunity to practice grabbing art supplies using our Art Supply Inspectors, placing unfinished projects in our colored table drawers (Drawer Inspectors), putting supplies away at the end of class, quietly working without talking during "Quiet Working Time" and sharing our art during "Share Time" at the end of class. 

We also practice art room procedures like how to ask to use the bathroom, ask a question, inform the teacher when you are done (thumbs up), and how to earn rainbow club points by following the art room rules.

Another key word/concept that is emphasized during the drawing activity is "details". Students are encouraged to use details to help develop the visual story of their Winter break memory. Examples of details are discussed at the start of class and brainstormed together as a whole group on a sample drawing on the marker board.

This assignment is completed by all grades K-2.

This activity usually takes two 30 minute art periods and finished drawings will be placed in our "End of Year" Portfolio. Even though we are drawing from memory now, by the end of the year we may forget what this drawing was all about, so, I use Avery Address Labels to stick to one corner of the paper describing the front and back drawings. This makes it easy to remember the drawing assignment and easy for students to describe it to parents at the end of the year. If the child has forgotten the drawing assignment, they need to only read the label in the corner. I also use this same address sticker to label our baseline portfolio drawings completed at the start of the year (same label size, different description).

Avery Address Label 5260

Winter Projects

Winter projects bring lots of excitement, chaos, and mess to the art room, but students have so much fun creating with new materials. Kindergarteners created snowmen from circular sponge stamps and white tempera paint on 4"x4" blue paper. Then, they built houses for their snowmen to live from popsicle sticks, wood glue and a splash of color using tempera paint. 

We also experimented with mini winter landscapes by tearing small 5"x6" drawing paper into three strips to create our foreground, middle ground, and background. One edge of each torn strip was traced with blue or purple chalk pastels, and then, smeared to give it a hazy look. Students overlapped the torn strips to create the illusion of hills and glued the strips in place to blue construction paper.

Second and first graders learned special tricks used by artists to create the illusion of space in their own winter landscapes such as overlapping, changing the size of objects (smaller objects in background, larger objects in foreground) as well as the placement of objects on the paper (Lower objects in foreground, higher objects in background), and changing the value of objects so it appears lighter and hazier as it recedes into the background.

Second graders used double loaded and dry brush techniques to create their trees, while first graders cut their trees for their winter landscapes from green construction paper.

Recycled Snowmen are a tradition in second grade as a winter project. It gives second grade students the opportunity to use glue guns safely and choose materials that would be most appropriate to use with glue guns or craft glue such as buttons, pom pom, fleece, sequins, scrap paper, etc.

Lines, Lines, and more Lines!

I must admit that this lesson idea is not my own, but an idea I borrowed from the great Cassie Stephens at  "What the Art Teacher Wore" blog.  Line is one of six basic design elements in art and students learn about new line vocabulary at the kindergarten level through this lesson and my first and second graders can review their basic line vocabulary as we paint, draw, and sculpt various different lines.  First, kindergarten students are introduced to basic line vocabulary through a poem called "Larry the Line" written by Cassie Stephens.

Larry the Line

Is a friend of mine 

(creating a snake by opening the fingers of your hand, puppet style and there's your snake!)

He can make three

(hold up a three with your fingers)

Straight lines for me!

Ver-tickle

(create a vertical line with your forearm)

Diagonal and horizontal!

(pantomime each)

Any curve, he can learn

With a twist and a turn.

When he's out of his tangle

he makes a great...angle.

(created by placing your hand on your hip and pointing to your elbow)

Any line, he can make

After all, he's a snake! 

After learning the Larry the Line poem, students receive a demonstration on painting. Cassie Stephens likens the bristles of the paint brush to a ballerina: It always dances on it's toes and never scoots around on it's bottom. We also discuss how we dip only the tip of our brush in the paint and never smash Mr. Brush's hairs for that will give him one bad hair day and an awful headache! After demonstrating how to paint a zig zag, wavy, straight, dotted, and dashed line, the students paint the same lines on their own paper using black tempera paint.

Kindergarten add colors of their choosing.

On the next day of this unit, kindergarteners were introduced to our tempera paint cakes.  Students were reminded to use lots of water to activate the tempera cakes and how to clean the brush before choosing another color. 

My first and second graders are also reviewing lines, painting, and brush procedures with a Kandinsky inspired art lesson. On the first day, we examined one of Kandinsky's Compositions using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). We also discussed key life facts like where he was born, what inspired him, what was going on during his life, etc. with a keynote presentation. Over the course of 3-4 art classes, students painted chinet plates (perfect plates for painting because of its stiff texture) with Kandinsky inspired concentric circles. We also discussed how radial designs can also appear circular like Kandinsky's concentric circles. Once the plates are painted and patterned, my first and second graders will turn these paper plates into looms and weave. I will be honest, I am a little nervous about teaching first and second graders how to weave. Can you imagine the chaos, but we are going to give it a try!

Baseline Portfolio Drawing, Rules and Procedures

The first two to three weeks of school for all grades allows for much practice of the art room rules and procedures. Each day students come to the art room, we quickly review the art room rules, procedures, and expectations, how to receive punches in individual Art "buck" punch cards and gain points for Rainbow Club as a class. A new activity I created to make the explanation of procedures and rules more exciting was an art room scavenger hunt. Second grade students, working with their table groups, were given a list of items to seek and find in the art room ranging from Art Jobs and Staplers to scrap paper drawers and sign language signs. First and kindergarten students were shown pictures from the art room in a keynote presentation and together as a class pointed to the found items in the room.

The first two weeks also allow me to gain valuable information about students' current skill levels in drawing and name writing. I call these drawings baseline portfolio drawings. Each year kindergarten through second grade, students will draw a self portrait and "My House" drawing without guidance on 9”x12” drawing paper and with a #2 pencil. These drawings usually take 2-3 days and students will add color with crayons (kindergarten) or colored pencils (first and second grades). For those students who finish early, we talk about adding "details" to give the viewer more information. For example, within the background of their self portraits, I tell them to draw items that tell me more about their hobbies and interests.

Second grade students this week will also list items to add to this year's Rainbow Club Chart and as a group VOTE FOR the ACTIVITIES they like best TO ADD to the RAINBOW CLUB chart.

Anchor Standard 1 (K-2): Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
Anchor Standard 2 (K-2): Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
Anchor Standard 10 (K-2): Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to create art.

First Grade Neighborhoods

First graders collaborated on a neighborhood project. After brainstorming a list of several items we might find in a neighborhood, each table section worked together to create a neighborhood within a city using pencils, crayons, colored pencils and permanent markers on 12" x 18" paper. Each paper within a table section (four papers together) is connected to the next with streets, so access can be gained to every home within the neighborhood.

Homes were made from origami paper squares. The step by step directions can be found in a previous post. Students added details to their homes such as windows, doors, and shingles and then glued to their 12" x18" paper.

After their neighborhoods were complete, table sections collaborated on a sign that would display the name of their neighborhood for all to see.

First Grade City Complete

We combined our neighborhoods and connected our streets to make one giant city on display in the first grade reading nook. When you are at the school, make sure you stop by for a visit at the Holloway Schulte Brockmueller Bahrenfuss City! See our process and creating at my previous blog post HERE.