Shapes with scissors

We are working on Learning Targets with our school; using tools properly is something we felt was very important. Kindergarten is all about the basics, and when you are mixing secondary colors or drawing and cutting shapes, it's a constant struggle to make things interesting for kids. I continue to incorporate characters and books that students know and love.

The last two weeks have been the start to clay projects at Cedar Creek; and to start clay, I typically read a story related to the project.  This year, Kindergarten will be creating clay caterpillars, they will experiment with sculpting the clay and adding texture (Post coming soon.) We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and created a colorful caterpillar by drawing and cutting circles. I even introduced the "magic trick" of cutting two and three shapes at once.

 Students draw and cut their own shapes, they add in details like a face and called it the very hungry kindergartner.  They added a background of a leaf and even draw colorful fruits and vegetables using shapes.

We also looked at organic shapes and used some organic shapes to create a penguin. Students draw and cut their own penguin and complete a penguins home in the background. 

Keith Haring

With the recent cold streak coming through Minnesota, our school had two unscheduled days off due to weather.  This becomes a nightmare for keeping the classes on the same pace; NOT ANYMORE! This is a great one day project for kids to learn the importance of movement, proportions and motor skills (cutting, gluing) This also is easy enough for a sub plan if you have paper scraps or cut construction paper.

As a class, we looked at the work of Keith Haring

Haring shows movement with his figures while also showing human proportions.

Students stood around the room and paused in a way that would look like they were moving, they looked at each other and came up with a few poses for their Haring style characters to be doing.

Students drew a stick person posing in a way that shows motion, then outlined the body to make them show up better on the construction paper.

Students cut out the figure and glued them down on two separate colors, they tried to choose colors that would make them pop out against the background.

Students added movement lines to make it look like their figure was dancing, running, jumping, and flailing their limbs!

First grade end of trimester

First graders finished painting their primary and mixed secondary colored fish, after finishing the painting, they outlined in sharpie, cut out seaweed and glued it on, these are three of the finished examples.

First grade learned about Mosaic tile art and made fall, warm colored trees.  They ripped brown paper for the tree and branches and glued them to look like a realistic tree.

The following week, students reviewed the warm colors and looked at the trees outside our art room window.  They continued in the mosaic style ripping the red, yellow, and orange paper into a leaf pile, then glueing the leaves onto the tree, filling the space with bright warm colored leaves.

 Two finished examples.

first and second grade

Second graders became interior designers last week, mapping out their bedrooms from an overhead perspective.  Students created a key and symbols to stand for each piece of furniture, toys, door, or window.

They also did a watercolor emulation of Vincent VanGogh's  "vase with 12 sunflowers" painting

They first drew with pencil, followed by tracing over the lines with a crayon, the crayon serves as a wax resist for the watercolor, it helps paint stay in the lines.

Finished work will have the table and background painted.

 First grade was eager to bring some spring flowers and color to our snowy community, they folded and cut out petals, stems, and leaves to make a paper flower

Finished work will have a pointillism butterfly flying over the flowers.