First Grade Birdhouses

 

As soon as Valentine's Day is over, I immediately start dreaming of spring. Late winter in the Midwest is a dreary, gray landscape. Not like the winter wonderland of December! So by the end of February I'm ready to pull out the bright colored construction paper and get some color on the walls. The first grade students took two classes to complete these adorable birdhouses. We were inspired by the pictures here. The first class was spent making the shapes of bird houses and birds, adding patterns with oil pastels, and painting with watercolor. For the second class, we glued down white strips of paper to a colorful background and used black tempera cakes to make "wrinkles" on our birch tree trunks. Then we cut out our bird houses and birds and glued them in our trees. The really add a splash of color to our dull winter and help us look forward to spring!

O Christmas Tree...

Some of the first graders and Kindergartners created these fun Christmas trees this week for their last project before winter break. We drew a triangle at the bottom of the paper, and then continued to stack triangles up until the top of the tree. Then we added a star and a trunk. We traced these with black oil pastel, then colored with soft drawing chalk. They were messy, but fun. Each one turned out so different!

Brrrrrr! Penguins!!

The first grade class created these fantastic penguins this week, just in time for the cold weather to hit. It is COLD outside, so we need to bundle up. I love these inspiration pieces from Mrs. Anderson's Art Blog. We started by creating arch shapes for the body and tummy of our penguins, and used the black and white scraps to make eyes. Add an orange beak and some cold weather accessories, and we're all set for a blustery December. The perfect final touch on these guys was to stamp some snowflakes with a q-tip, and sprinkle the wet paint with sparkly glitter.

Something's Fishy in the Art Room

Why no October entries?? Well, for the last few weeks, the elementary students have been hard at work making "fishy" art work to decorate the lobby of our auditorium. The middle school put on the play "Little Mermaid Jr." and asked us to help decorate. Each class made a different project, and all were hung on the walls, windows, and doors of the lobby and down the halls. It's amazing how much space 400 pieces of art can take up!

These beautiful fish rainbow fish were created by each kindergarten class. After reading about author Marcus Pfister's "Rainbow Fish" had to share his shiny scales to make friends, each student made a scale from a paper plate and covered it in shiny glitter. We attached all the scales together to make a huge rainbow fish for each class!

The first grade students read the book "I am the Best Artist in the Ocean" about a very confident giant squid. Each student made their own squid, complete with long tentacles, and wrote a quote about what they are best at.










Second graders used liquid watercolors and white crayons to make these amazing underwater jellyfish scenes. We were inspired by this project I discovered on pinterest.

In third grade, we have been talking about unity and variety. To make these coral reef pictures, we used opposites: big and small, near and far, high and low, in front and behind, etc. The water effect was done with plastic garbage bags and liquid watercolor.

These beautiful fish were made by 4th grade students who first used glue to design their fish, and then colored with analagous and complementary colored chalk.

Finally, the 5th grade used watercolors to complete these colorful fish.

The display was hung by parent volunteers. What a great show of teamwork to show off our schools' talented artists, musicians, and actors!

Robots in Space!

First graders are learning about how we can use simple shapes to build complicated things, like robots! We looked at examples of robot "parts" and talked about how we could use shapes like rectangles, circles, semicircles, and squares to create robots with lots of moving parts!

Time for an art teacher confession: I rarely do the exact same project with every class. I have four sections of first grade. The first session used gray paper and shaded it their robots with chalk to add value, which I saw and loved in this lesson from deep space sparkle. I thought they looked great, but the kids were not impressed. They just thought it looked "dusty!" So for my next group, I switched to metallic silver paint. The shiny paint was more fun for the kids, but it didn't give the value I was hoping for. I think the best results were with the group that I had do both. We painted with metallic paint first, then added the chalk value when they were dry. Art is about experimenting and finding what works best!

After our robots were finished, we cut them out and put them on black paper. We used chalk dipped in water to create a space-themed background. The wet chalk technique was the highlight for the students!

Hot Air Balloons

 For my first wedding anniversary a few years ago, my husband and I went on a hot air balloon ride over Omaha. It wasn't actually his idea, we went with family. But he gets romantic date points anyway since I didn't have to plan it!
I took lots of pictures, and my first grade students love to hear the story of my adventure. They are always curious about how the balloons work and how they land. We practiced drawing the shapes of hot air balloons and then used the lines we practiced last week to create patterns. We also touched on using different sizes in our picture to make balloons look far away or close up. During the first class we drew and colored the background with crayons. For the second class, we reviewed how to use watercolor paint in a safe and smart way. It's good to review best practices for each material in detail these first few lessons during the year. Paintbrush care is a good habit!