Letter Value Studies

I'm always looking for that perfect "First Project of the Year" project. The one that's not too stressful or complicated, but sets the tone for learning and thinking creatively. Oh, and it has to be fun for the students, too! Fifth grade was a struggle for me, but I think this project, inspired by a lesson from ArtEdla,  fits the bill. We started by creating a grid on our paper with a little bit of math (STEAM anyone??). Then we added the letters of our names, starting in the first box, and adding letters to each box until we came to the end. Then we started over at the first box, adding letters until there were two overlapping letters in each box. The students then had to color in each box using crayons, pushing to create different values of each color. They turned out pretty neat, and it was a good way to start the year with a successful project!

Winter Evergreens

  Welcome back to school! After a nice winter break and an extra day off due to cold temperature, I am ready to get back in the school routine! We are easing back in with a fun and high-success project with the fifth graders, inspired by one of my many pinterest pins. We discussed value, the darkness or lightness of a color. We looked at how there can be many values of the same color. Blue is blue. But it is also navy, baby blue, sky blue, royal blue, etc. We can change the value by adding black or white to a color. Adding white creates a tint. Adding black creates a shade. We used tints and shades of a single color to create a quiet moon lit landscape. We used black to create a silhouette of evergreen trees, and finally stamped on some snow for a little drama. They all turned out so fantastic! I love projects that get "oohs and ahhs" from hard-to-impress fifth graders! They look stunning in our hallway, but I'll also be happy when the weather warms up and we can break out the spring projects.

Midnight at the Pumpkin Patch

I loved this lesson from Fine Lines so much, I wanted to try out a simpler version for my second graders. We used pencil and eraser to draw pumpkins, using the sizes to show distance in our picture. We colored them with oil pastel and used value to make them look three-dimensional and round. The pumpkins look like they are glowing in the moonlight!

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!