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:

Kindergarten Self-Portraits


SOOOOO much learning went into these self-portraits.  Kinders have been learning about texture, color mixing, collage, and drawing from observation.  Here's how we did it:
Day one we read this book about all the beautiful, different colors of us:

We talked about how everyone is the same but different and we learned how to mix a color for us using brown, white, yellow, and pink.  We painted an entire page our color.
Day two we talked about texture and mixed two colors to make a new color for our background. We used texture combs to draw lines in our wet paint and give our backgrounds texture.
Day three we practiced looking VERY CLOSELY at our faces with a mirror. We cut out an oval and drew our features with an oil pastel, paying close attention to our eyes.  We learned that there are three parts to our eyes, the white part, the iris (colored part), and a black pupil.
Day four we cut out a neck and ears from the rest of our skin color paper and assembled our portrait on our background. We cut out a shirt from construction paper.  At this point we looked very funny because we were all BALD!
Day five we used markers to add in some details to our shirts and then we broke out the paints again. We used brown, yellow, black, white, and red to mix a color for our hair. We talked about how everyone's hair color is unique, just like our skin.  We also practiced different types of lines for different types of hair, curly, straight, spiky, etc.

Whew, there you have it! I love how expressive each and every one of these are.

Wayne Thiebaud Ice Cream Cones
(learning all about tints!) 

 

Firsties have been learning all about COLOR!  First we did this cool color mixing project and now we're learning about value.  We looked at some of Wayne Thiebaud's work:


We were inspired to make our own special treats!  We decided to make ice cream cones with not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE SCOOPS!
On day one we drew out scoops and a cone on a large piece of paper.  Day two, we practiced mixing paint to make different shades of a color.  Day three, we chose a color for our ice cream and made 5 different tints and painted all of our scoops.  We also mixed all the primaries to make a brown color for our cones.  After it dried, on day four, we cut out all the parts and assembled our ice cream cones. The last day we added in special details like the cherry on top and golden sprinkles!

Here they are: