Eric Carle Paintings AND Collages!

So in honor of the great Eric Carle and his wonderful children's illustrations, I introduced his art making process to the 1st and 2nd grade students through the movie "Picture Writer." The 1st graders just completed an assignment where we made drawings of planets, so it made since to connect them with the book "Draw me a Star." I also was inspired by Deep Space Sparkle's Carle butterflies. Check out what they have been up too!

We started off painting papers just like Carle would, only rather than working with tissue paper we used drawing paper.

Students collaged butterflies on drawing paper, then cut and pasted those butterflies onto a piece of colored construction paper. 

Those working on star collages, first used oil pastels for the background, then cut out their stars.

Kinder- Kandinsky's

Kindergarten has been practicing mixing their primary colors to make secondary colors. They did a great job of demonstrating this in their versions of a very recognizable Kandinsky painting. The students used tempera cakes for this assignment. A little tip- go to the dollar tree, and buy up all of their muffin tins. They make wonderful containers for those tempera cakes which are easy to pass out, but often come in plastic trays that crack and fall apart!

Teachers' bargaining rallies held at Tenn. Capitol | The Associated Press | News | Washington Examiner

Teachers' bargaining rallies held at Tenn. Capitol | The Associated Press | News | Washington Examiner

This is what I did today... I went and rallied for my teacher collective bargaining rights in the state of Tennessee in downtown Nashville. Thousands of teachers and supporters came from around the state (and Tennessee is a BIG state.) Step up and speak out for your rights as a teacher! E-mail your local and state representatives, make phone calls, write letters, and even pay them a friendly visit. Don't let your state's government take away your teacher benefits!

In regards to the turn out of us in the rainy weather, one speaker commented "we have bus duty in worse weather than this!" So true! I don't know to many other groups of people who wouldn't let the rain get in their way. After standing in the rain, soaking wet for 3 hours, I would and will do it all again.

2nd Grade Shading

It is truly amazing what 2nd graders are capable of!

In teaching my students value, we are kinda working backwards, or maybe it is in the right order, I'm not sure. My second graders I taught them what tints and shades were, and we made three of each. Now I recently placed a softball in front of them and attempted to teach them about value and shading in it's practical application- rather than in a design. I was really amazed with some of their little pencil drawings.

Of course not all of my students works turned out this fabulous. See all of them in our artsonia gallery!

1st Grade Matisse Collages

After a short power point about the artist Henri Matisse, students were instructed to create an abstract collage without using pencils to draw out their shapes before cutting. Students were also instructed to create a border which framed in their central image. I demonstrated how they could make cut outs in their paper by folding their paper scraps over- it was like I taught them a magical secret! Here are the results!

4th Grade Hero Portraits

 Jumping off of Martin Luther King day, I spoke with my fourth graders about heroes, what makes a hero a hero, who are their heroes, and what adjectives can be used to describe their heroes, (incorperating a little bit of language.) In this lesson I also gave students the opportunity to chose the materials that they wanted to work in. Students could chose from colored pencils, markers, crayons, water colors, and/ or tissue paper with mod podge. The requirements were to create a border that allowed space for them to write their adjectives, (which also had to be writen in cursive!), a portrait of their hero, and to fill the space with color. We had also completed a portrait lesson earlier in the year which the drawings were done fairly well, but the painting did not turn out so great. These portraits are much better, and only one of three classes have completed this assignment, so hopefully more are to come! * See below the first portrait is of me! I'm my students hero- yay!



Lesson Flop? Help!

So this happens all the time to all of us, especially those of us who are still fairly newer teachers; we teach a lesson that doesn't turn out as well as we'd hoped. This lesson I did with Kindergarten kinda turned out this way so suggestions are welcomed and appreciated!

I began the lesson by reading the book "What did you put in your Pocket?" in discussing textures and describing those textures. Next we learned about the magic of color mixing, which is always a crowd pleaser! I had the students make their own secondary colors using tempera cakes on a paper divided into thirds. When those papers were dry the following class the students traced a pocket shape on each section of their painted papers, to use to make their own "What did you MAKE in your Pocket?" Book.


The books were completed by cutting and pasting the colored pockets and title, drawing stitches on their pockets, and writing a single sentence on each page that read "I made (insert color made here.)"

I want to figure out a way for the students to make these more individualized, I hate it when it occurs to me, every single artwork looks the same! Check out the results and let me know how I could make this better! Thanks so much!