One-Color Collages!


Kinders learned about color!  We looked at the color wheel, read a book about color, and revisited color mixing. Kiddos chose their favorite color and had to make that color without teacher assistance (project-based assessment, guys).  We painted an entire sheet of paper one color.  After it dried kids cut it up to make a single-color collage, while I ran around like a mad-woman writing down the reasons behind our  color-faves. Some of their reasons are so sweet!

Secret Stained Glass! 


First graders made this awesome stained glass art!  (no, I didn't really use glass with first graders!)
We looked at lots of examples of stained glass, from Tiffany to the glass in the Sagrada Familia (my personal favorite)

We also looked at multiple examples of art with letters and numbers, aka Charles Demuth and Jasper Johns.

Then we went off and sketched out our designs. We hid a number or a letter and drew lots of straight lines to make it look like broken glass.

We used clear laminating sheets cut in half to make our 'stained glass'.  We put a piece of clear plastic down on top of our design.  I made up a bunch of BLACK glue bottles by mixing black tempera paint into half filled regular old elmer's.

Then, we simply traced over our lines with the black glue.

After it dried, we used sharpies to color in the spaces. We used mod podge as a finishing touch to glue everything down again (some of the glue had a tendency to peel up on some kid's work) and to give our art that 'glassy' look. We called it 'secret' stained glass because it's a secret what letter/number we hid in our pictures, you have to search for it!
 

Marker Printing!

First graders learned about both printing and patterns!  Marker printing is one of the easiest and most colorful ways to print with young kids.  We started by looking at lots of different types of lines and patterns. Kiddos went off to draw their own patterns on scrap paper.  We then took a styrofoam printing plate and drew many types of patterns with a dull pencil.

Printing:
First, we first colored our styrofoam plates with crayola markers.
Then, we took a clean piece of paper and a damp sponge and we wet the paper with the sponge.
Last, we 'stamped' our marker-covered plate onto our wet paper.
We rubbed (aka massaged) the paper to help the color transfer.
Peel up the plate and VOILA!

Textured Clay Birds



First graders made these super-cute clay birds.  We learned all about texture and used different fabrics, stamps, and found objects to press into the clay to give it unique texture.
Kids learned all about slipping and scoring to attach a wing and eyes and a mouth/beak.  If you don't slip and score your clay, your wing, eyes and beak will fall off! 
I poked the holes for the hanger and the legs when they were done.  After the clay had been fired once (bisqued), we used florescent oil pastels to color them.  The kids watched as I dipped each bird into a bucket of watered down black india ink.  There were many 'ohh's and ahhh's' as the ink filled in all the white spots on their birds. We learned that the oil pastels colors resist the watery ink.  After they dried, we use pipe cleaners to make a hanger and feet for our birds.

To make a home for our birds we made a tree! Kindergarteners were in the middle of a unit on color, so some classes mixed up green paint and made the leaves on the tree for the birds.  We experimented with adding white and black (tints and shades) to our greens.  Some Kindergartners made tints and shades of blue for our raindrops.  Here is our tree: