Abstract Painting in First Grade

Last week, my first graders, who I see for 30 minutes twice a week, spent one class learning as much as they could about Wassily Kandinsky, abstract art, non-objective vs. objective and painting to music...all in 30 minutes. Whew! It was fast and furious. Here's a peak into our lesson and time together. 

My students absolutely LOVED this lesson and I cannot wait to share with you what our plan is for our paintings. In the meantime, I've been asked a lot what supplies we used for this lesson. Let's start with the paper. I ALWAYS buy 80lbs paper because it's the best paper for everything: watercolor paint, tempera, collage, you name it. I purchase about 4 reams a year for my 350 students.

 My go-to watercolor pan watercolor is Crayola's Mixing Colors. I only order the refill sets, never new sets. I order the following colors: magenta, red, red-orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, blue-violet and purple.

 My VERY favorite oil pastels for resist are the florescent oil pastels by Sargent. All of the supplies mentioned can be found in your art supply catalog. 

 If you watch my video, you'll notice I do A LOT of call and response. It's my number one teaching tool...I probably use it to a fault! However, it's a great way for me to keep my students attention, teach vocabulary and have them retain information and directions. It also WORKS WONDERS for my English language learners...they LOVE repeating after me!

 Also...can we talk about what amazing abstract artists these guys are?! Holy cats! I am seriously thinking of printing their paintings on some fabric. I need these masterpieces as a dress, y'all!

 I'm so excited to share with you what the master plan is for these...so be sure and stay tuned!

 What are your favorite ways to teach kiddos about abstract painting? Do you have a favorite artist that you like to introduce your students to? I'd love to know!

 Thank you for letting me share these amazing abstract masterpiece by first grade with y'all. I hope they make you as happy as they make me!

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In the Art Room: Romero Britto-Inspired Hearts in First grade!

Hey, y'all! This blog post is brought to you by my (and my students!) newfavorite things:

* Bingo Dotters (Daubers?) filled with India ink

* Bleeding Tissue Paper

* Sargent Paint Sticks

We had a blast with this lesson. So much so that when I shared on my Instagram, I got lots of questions. I thought I'd create a short video tutorial for your and your kiddos! Here you go:

Please pardon my nasally voice as I'm currently losing a fight with a head cold. I blame the children.

 I have 30 minute art classes with my wee-ones. We managed to crank these out even after watching a video about Britto and reviewing lines, shapes and patterns. I was so loving the direction they were going so far.

 The following art class, we learned all about bleeding tissue paper magic. This had the kids very excited. I encouraged them to use either warm or cold colors in each section. Some did and some didn't. It's first grade, y'all. They do what they want. 

 These hearts are HUGE. We created them on 18" squares. So, by the third art class, some had a little bit more tissue-papering to do and some did not. So I introduced the idea of the paint sticks. I really let the kids do what they wanted in the background...it was a new medium for them and I really wanted to see what they would come up with.

 By our fourth and final 30 minute art class, I still had some kids wrapping up their masterpieces. My early finishers set to work with their paint makers. They added pattern to GIANT hearts that I drew on multi colored bulletin board paper.

 I hot glued their giant hearts together and added them to our heart display!

 Ugh, still need to get some signage up there!

Such a fun lesson, I had to share! Have fun!

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How to Teach Paper Weaving!

I'll never forget my first year teaching. It was: wonderful, traumatizing, exciting, nerve-wracking and, most of all, a HUGE learning curve! I'll never forget seeing "weaving" in my first grade curriculum and breaking into a sweat. I'd gotten a C in fibers in college (which is so funny as fibers are my favorite thing!) BECAUSE OF MY WEAVING! When warping that big ole loom, I missed a couple of warps. Instead of going back and fixing my mistake, I thought, "eh, that professor will never notice." Little did I know that it'd leave a huge run all the way down the length of my weaving that seemed to scream, "THIS SLACKER DESERVES A C!" And a C I got.

I remember introducing weaving to my first graders that year and a boy named Jonathan shouted out, "Weaving's for GIRLS and I ain't doing it!" It was then that I realized I had to make weaving (and teaching in general) fun, silly, wacky and engaging. For all my learners, boys and girls. The thing is, he turned out to be my best weaving and biggest fan of the medium. As most boys do!

Introducing kids to weaving is something that I've been doing now for 18 years...and this lesson hasn't changed all that much. I read the same book, show them how to make a loom on the first day and we weave on the next. I know so many teachers struggle with weaving. The key is, introducing them to weaving with a simple paper weaving. Once they understand the concept, they'll take off like a weavin' rocket ship. 

I thought I'd record my two thirty minute classes. Here's what we did on the very first day: creating our looms!

Here are some must-have visuals that I always use: thrift store weavings and looms; my GIANT paper loom made from laminated paper; my Goat in the Rug book.

I also love having the roving for the kids to see and touch. Normally, I'll pass it around but I had forgotten to check with the nurse for allergies so I held off on this day.

This here is my FAVORITE book on weaving and the kids absolutely love it! After we create our looms, we sign them and await the following day's weaving adventure:

If you'd like more info on paper weaving, you might enjoy this video. It will explain the process more:

Here's how we went about cutting our looms and how I explained it...

I'll keep you posted on just what we are doing with our weavings...I'm really excited and cannot wait to share. I have a TON of weaving projects both on my YouTube channel (just search my Fibers playlist) and right here on my blog. Happy Weaving!

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In the Art Room: Top 15 Fave Valentine's Day Lessons!

After winter break, I always find myself in the mood to start Valentines-y/Warm-Fuzzy/Lovey-Dovey projects with the kids. When doing a little searching on my blog last night, I discovered that I've done 15 Valentine's-themed lessons over the years. I had no idea I'd done so many! I thought I'd share them with you today. May of the links back to the original post will include an instructional video. Please let me know if you do any of these lessons, I'd love to see what you and your kiddos create!

Robert Indiana Love Prints! Believe it or not, my sweet FIRST GRADERS created these a couple years ago! It was a great lesson for printmaking and definitely one I will be doing again. If you don't have printing ink, you might want to check out this blog post where I'll show you how to print with paper and markers!

James Rizzi Love Birds!  Who doesn't love James Rizzi?! These birds are based on some of his work and is a great tie-in if you've already taught Rizzi and his fun cityscape works.

 Recycled Hearts!  Last year, I had a stock pile of messy-mats from our months of painting. We used them to make these two fun works of art (see below also) and they were such a hit! What a great way to review the warm colors, pattern and line.

So much sweetness!

Chris Uphues Hearts! If y'all don't know who Chris Uphues is, then you need to! He's one of my fave dudes to follow on Instagram. His artwork is so fun, so happy and so kid-friendly. They had a blast creating these happy hearts inspired by him.

J Goldcrown Hearts! If you need a quick one day project, I would recommend this one for sure! You can introduce your students to another street artist, J Goldcrown, and have them work in chalk! This is a great project for just about all levels. 

Sculpture Hearts! Last year, I introduced my second graders to Celluclay with this project. I have 30 minute art classes with these kiddos so we had to hustle! We spent one day covering our foil hear in clay, two days painting and the last day stringing beads. These were one of my favorite projects for Valentine's day!

 My Heart Has Wings! If you want to do a feel-good project with your faculty and staff, might I recommend this one? We did it on a PD day and it was so much fun. Of course, this would be a great project for kids as well.

Candy Heart Sculptures! My fourth graders created these candy hearts last year and they had a blast. We used plaster strips which created a super hard surface for the candy. We even made giant candy boxes to display them in!

 Woven Hearts! Every year, first grade does a paper weaving and every year we do something a little new. Last year, they nailed the weaving part so well, I thought I'd introduce them to simple sewing. They did great and I loved hanging them up like a quilt.

Candy Heart Drawings! When my fourth grade early finishers were done with their candy heart sculptures, I had them move on to a drawing of their candy hearts with oil pastel.

Britto Mural! A few years ago, I had to be out for a couple of weeks for jury duty. While I was gone, I had my students work on the parts of this Britto-inspired mural. It was great because then there was a fun masterpiece to hang in the hall when I returned. You can check out the instructional videos in the link.

Valentine Animals! My kindergarten kiddos created these fun animals last year. I created an instructional video for each one which you can find by clicking on the link. 

Collaborative Heart Mural! Collaborative pieces are a lot of fun this time of year. If you follow the link, you'll see which grades created what for this huge collaborative pieces that still hangs in our front office.

Peter Anton Box of Chocolates! This might have been a kid-favorite as it involved using EVERYONE'S favorite art supply: puffy paint! Check out how we made the faux candies and boxes by following the link.

What are your favorite projects this time of year? Love to hear! 

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In the Art Room: Royal First Graders!

Well hello there! My Royal First Graders and I are thrilled to have you drop by and visit. These sweet kiddos have been working super hard on their 9" X 12" selfies for our upcoming Artome Art Show! 

If this project looks familiar, that's because I've shared it before on this here blog! You can find additional information about this project here and here.

I realize that I've never shared a video of this process which might make it easier to understand. It's a project with plenty of steps...which is easy for me to break down in my 30 minute class time. Because I see my younger students for 30 minutes, I don't often make instructional videos for them. However, I did create one just for you! Here you go:

I also got a lot of questions about this project on Instagram, namely how do I teach color mixing for skin tones. So I thought I'd film myself explaining that to my students. I also wrote a blog post about that process which you can find here. 

For our Artome art show, which is a fundraiser, I always love to have the kids create self-portraits. Every parent LOVES a self-portrait! They sell really well. This fall, when I had the art show looming, I was really sweating coming up with 5 new selfie lessons. It was then that my husband said, "were the ones from last year successful? Then just do them again!" I don't know why I always feel the need to reinvent the wheel. The self portrait lessons we did last year were all so well received. So, I'm doin' 'em all again. Only the kindergarten lesson is getting a reboot. Here's what my third grade is creating:

And here is what my fourth grade is up to:

Everyone is super excited with their hard work.

 Especially my Royal Firsties! 

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In the Art Room: How to Paint Skin Tone!

My first grade students learned how to paint their own skin tones last week. When I shared this image on my IG, I was asked by several folks how I taught them to paint their skin tone in 30 minutes. Not gonna lie, with the reading of The Colors of Us and an explanation of just how to mix the "right" colors for us, we were pushing it time-wise. But I'm pretty infamous for running a late. Thankfully, my work buddies are super forgiving. 

Instead of explaining to y'all how I teach the firsties to make their own skin tone, I thought I'd film myself. You can find more videos of me teaching (so as to see what NOT to do, ha!) on my YouTube channel under the playlist A Glimpse Inside. 

Just a note: The book is The Colors of Us by Karen Katz and has been a favorite of mine for years. I read it every chance I get when it comes to us creating selfies. Also, we are using Blick tempera paint. I've used a lot of tempera over the years...definitely splurge on the more expensive stuff. I like Sax Versa Temp, Blick and Crayola...but not the washable stuff. Just a thought since I'm sharing our painting process.

And in case you are wondering what we are creating: our Royal Selfies, thank you very much! This image is from last year. We've just moved on to creating our faces...tomorrow we'll add our hair and start our crowns. If you'd like to see the complete lesson, you can find it here. 

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In the Art Room: Ten Fave Fall Projects for Kids

Happy fall, y'all! Last week I shared with you MY favorite fall crafts...today I thought I'd share my Top Ten Fave Fall Projects for kids! Let's kick it off with this weaving project because it's one of my very faves.

1. Tree Weaving Lesson I usually do this lesson with my students in third grade and up. I developed this lesson after being tired of the same old weaving projects I'd done for years. This video was created for you, as an instructor...but you could totally use it with the kiddos!

You can see more of this lesson in my first blog post right here. 

 2. Fall Landscape Collage This lesson I just recently shared and I'm really excited about it. The kids learned so stinkin' much and had a blast while doing so. I cannot wait to display these in the hall. Here's the instructional video:

My other first grade classes are wrapping these up this week. I am looking forward to seeing what they create!

 3. Positive and Negative Gelli Prints When I initially did this project, I made my own gelli-plates. You can find the recipe here. What I don't love about making these plates is that, well, you have to make them and it's labor-intensive. Not only that, but if you are a vegetarian or a vegan, you will definitely be opposed to using the gelatin that goes into the making of these plates.

The good news is that if you own GelliArts printing plates, you can get the very same effect. And it's so much fun!

 4. Sunflower Gelli Plates Prints with Puffy Paint Nothing says fall to me like Sunflowers. I loved this Andy Warhol inspired project and so did my second grade kiddos...although I think it could have easily been down with my older students as well. 

When we displayed these in a square kind of Warhol-style.

 5. Leaf Relief Another great fall project that introduces kids to texture is this leaf relief project. This is a project that I've done successfully with kids of a variety of ages from second grade on up!

 It looks really fabulous with a painted and textured canvas background!

 6. Painted Fall Landscape Landscapes are always a fave in the fall and this one is no exception. You can find a video with more details of this project right here:

Here's a little more about this landscape here as well:

These were a crowd pleaser and really introduced the kiddos to so stinkin' much that's important to art makin'.

 7. Van Gogh-inspired Haunted Mansion True facts: I LOVE Disney's Haunted Mansion and so do my students. I have a 1969 Disney CD that is the telling of the story of the Haunted Mansion. It's like riding the actual ride: it takes you thru the tale of the mansion. Last year, I had a fourth grade class that was so interested in the story that I based an art project around it! You can check out the details here and the instructional video right here:

The kids had the best time creating these Spooky Starry Nights!

8. Printed Fall Leaves Discovering the magic of marker printing was pretty much a game changer for me and this project makes it so simple and fun. Let's talk about it:

So easy! And one way to use those pesky markers (am I the only art teacher who hates markers?! UGH.)

9. Fall Trees with Warm and Cool Skies So this project was actually done during a study of Asian art...but could so easily translate to fall! You can check out more of these beauties here.

 10. Collage Landscapes of Fall My sweet second graders are getting ready to embark on this project next week. I've not done this one in a couple of years and I'm ready to bring it back...they are so beautiful! This time around, I'll be creating a video so you can stay tuned for that...or just check the blog post here. 

Wow! I'm so excited for all, these pretties have me inspired! What are your fave fall projects? LOVE to hear about them.

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