tar beach....

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold is a wonderful, beautiful, and magical book. The 4th grade is studying slavery and later in the year will be looking at Civil Rights Movement. This book is perfect for showing the enchantment of a little girls imagination and tie in the Civil Rights Movement.

Even 4th grade still likes to have stories read to them. And I take every chance I can to read to my students. I just love the look on their faces when the hear the words and see the images. So I started off by reading them Tar Beach. 


Next, the students created them self flying. I showed them a few ways of drawing a flying self and did not limit the angle in which they were flying.

After they were finished drawing themselves, the students could choose anywhere they wanted to go or fly over! I had them mark off a boarder before drawing their backgrounds.

Once finished with their place, they added wallpaper pieces into the boarder. This gives the final touches on creating the quilt like feel the book has.

Go fly...

Up next:

Slavery Quilts!

portraits...

3rd grade is studying Jamestown!! And what goes along with Jamestown?... POCAHONTAS AND JOHN SMITH!!!

So... we created John Smith, Pocahontas, and Powhatan portraits.  The kids are writing a report in LA on one of the these three. They draw a portrait of the person they were writing their report on.

I think 3rd grade is a great time to introduce portrait drawing. I did a demonstration on drawing the correct face shape and breaking the face down with lines. It is very difficult for some kids to get the face shape right. But have them keep working at it. I had pictures of the 3 people for the kids to look at.


Once the kids finish drawing out their portrait... we made it look old!

Last year, I had this great cream colored paper that made the portraits look old. I do not have anymore of this awesome paper, so I thought we could use white paper and "antique" it. To make it look "antiqued" I had the kids crumple up their paper.

It was so cute seeing the kids nervous to... "ruin" their art. After the kids crumpled up their art, they watercolored with blue or brown over the entire paper.

 

After the portraits were painted, I ironed them to dry them out. Lastly, the kids traced over their drawings to make them darker.

Here they are...

working together...

is oh so awesome.... I am super excited about this little collaborative ditty we are doing with the first grade.

First, the kids each created a fantasy fish... I told them the sky is the limit when making your fish... I let them color with markers.

Once they finished creating their fantasy fish... they can go and create a background. I laid out long two long sheets of rolled newprint. They were probably 5 to 6 feet long. I have twelve first graders, so there were six kids to a background. The paper was big enough that each child had room to work. I gave them freedom on the background.... and they went crazy!!!

Once the piece had enough going on (which it quickly filled up)... they colored with crayons and then watercolored with blue over the entire paper. Last, we glued down the fish. I have the kids glue the fish with space between each. This way I can cut up the final piece and each kid will get to take home their fish with a collaborative background.

Check it out!

 Details:

I saw three ships come sailing in...

Holiday art with a twist (again)...

Here is the "holiday" project for the first grade. Instead of doing Christmas trees, snowmen, candy canes, etc... I took inspiration from the song the kids sung in the holiday concert.  (I saw three ships)

The kids drew three ships. Each ship had to be unique. I gave them the choice to create whatever sky they wanted. The ships were cut out and glued down on the water and sky background... I think they are pretty cute!

stories are great...

DUH!!!! I think they are a substantial starting point for an art project. There are thousands of beautiful and meaningful (with awesome illustrations) stories.

I read the 1st graders Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse by Leo Lionni. This is one of my favorites. Both the story and the pictures are super cute. Anyway, this project was inspired by one of the pages from this book.

We talked about how it is better that everyone's artwork is different even though we were inspired by the same story...

This project has a bit of everything... (it is not for the faint of heart) ( or if you do not like a mess)

-Drew the mice
-Colored the mine
-Drew the lizard
-Colored the lizard with markers in small blobs of different colors (make sure they stick to all light colors)
-Painted water over the lizard (to make it look tye-dyed)
-Used oil pastels on black paper to create the background
-Made a small leaf stamp from cardboard and fun foam
-Cut out mice and lizard
-Stamped the leaves
-Glued mice and lizard down

Whoa right? At the beginning of each class I wrote a list on the board and explained the order. Kids were at all different stages, but I think it helped to go over ( and over and over) the steps and having it written on the board. I thought the project was going to crash and burn because of all the steps...

BUT...

I think it went really well and I am extremely happy about how the kids were able to follow the multiple steps. There were only a few minor mess ups, but it is a great way to show how a mistake can be turned into a creative opportunity!