Group Murals -- All Grades

I, again, saw a lesson on Pinterest that grabbed my attention.  An art teacher, Katie, had her students make group murals at the end of the year to hang on the bulletin boards right away in the fall for the next year.  I thought, 'WHOA! Why didn't I think of that?'  The idea and lesson seemed simple enough.

I had originally planned to do this lesson in a few weeks, but with Art Show and Open House next week - I thought we should do some for open house!  I immediately started to plan.

I went and ripped bulletin board paper in different colors, laid them on the tables, poured some black tempra and waited for my kinders to walk in.

There are two rules for the black painting:
1) Your shapes can't touch each other.
2) You can't paint over anyone's work.

I had my kindergarten kiddos draw lots and lots of circles at their tables.  When their paper seemed decently full I gave them the next instruction: connect the circles with different types of lines - leave big spaces between lines.

Amazingly, this took almost all class and my room was almost completely silent - it was weird.

I found random spots around the room for these to dry for the next few classes.

After lunch I pulled them back to the tables with a plan: Have 1st graders paint them.

I told the kids their rules:
1) You can't paint over anyone's work.
2) Stick to one color (you get what you get and you don't throw a fit!)
3) Spread out where you put your color.

I made sure to make each student have a different color of paint - even if it was simply making it a tint or a shade.

 The students started at their own tables painting in spots and shapes.  I set a timer for 2 minutes and when that time was up they rotated to the next table.  The timer helped keep their attention, because each table's mural was unique - but it also spread out all the colors.

Again, the students were focused and quiet while they painted.

I plan to make more of these this week with words like "MUSIC" "ART" and so forth.  I can't wait!

Creativity Challenge - 1st Grade

One of my students with Autism - loves animals

I posted doing a 'Creativity Challenge' with my 3rd graders before spring break - well, that went so well I used it for first grade today.

It is spring picture day today, and all my first graders were dressed up in their best school clothes and the original lesson for today was to explore pointillism with paint.... I was afraid that even with paint shirts the students would get paint on their nice outfits - so we had a change of plans and did the creativity challenge instead.

Student who claimed he couldn't do it!

My first graders did a fantastic job!  I even had one student who proclaimed he couldn't draw, he couldn't think of anything, he was terrible at drawing  -- all before I passed out the papers.  Sure enough once we got started his was one of the most creative drawings!  He was so proud of his drawing.

This is a great lesson to keep for emergencies - picture day, sickness, day before break.  It seems most ages are able to complete a picture from a line without much of a struggle.

One Day Art Exercises - 3rd Grade

Original line makes up the top of the jet - a zigzag line.

It was the day before spring break, my last class of the day and I didn't have the heart to pop in a movie, so instead I challenged my students to a creativity battle.  Okay, so it wasn't so much a battle - but I was using dramatic flair from both "Iron Chef" and "Chopped".  I explained that the students would be getting a piece of paper with ONE line on it and they were to make it into the most creative picture they could - adding lots of detail.  They only had 30 minutes to do this - time starts now.

The kids took off.  All the lines where different so it made it difficult for students to judge their own work against a neighbors.  I had only one student struggle to start - but after a few suggestions from me, the table started to fire out their own ideas and that sparked an idea for the student and they too were in the game.

I was honestly quite surprised by the creativity.  I thought I'd have a lot more students resorting to easy pictures of people and snowmen.... boy was I wrong.

A mouth with a peanut.

A rhino.

This turned out to not only get a great exercise in creativity, but problem solving and composition.  When students were done drawing they colored with crayons and took them home!

I will keep this project to do again - maybe I'll even make it into a full lesson/unit!