Our Collaborative Alphabet!
First graders worked alongside fourth grade kiddos to make these amazing alphabet collages! The firsties made the collaged animals and objects and my awesome art teaching partner-in-crime, Danielle, worked with her fourth graders to design the letters and words. It was a collaborative effort all around! These will be hung up all around the school for the whole next year.  Here they all are:

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!