First Grade Colorful Fish

I love these colorful painted fish created by my first grade students.  We read the book Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert.  There are a lot of great fish inspiration in it and the kids love to read it.  To get started I made some drawing pages to help them. There were ideas for body shapes, fins and other fish details.  Students made sketches in pencil first and then black tempera paint on large paper.  We talked about the differences in drawing their fish in pencil and then using a brush.  The next class the kids used colorful tempera to fill in the fish and add any background details.  The following class the background was painted using liquid watercolors.  I love how colorful they are and how creative student were when drawing their fish.  It was also a great project for the kids to use tempera and watercolor paints.  Here are some of the finished pieces.  If you would like to see them all you can visit our online gallery here:  http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?project=1131832

African Necklaces

I saw the perfect lesson on Pinterest for my third grade African art unit.  It was from Once upon an Art Room.  Here is the link:  http://www.onceuponanartroom.com/2012/11/african-necklaces-paper-plates.html. 
 We looked at the beautiful beaded collars created by the Maasai tribes.  Each student created their own pattern using lines and shapes.  Next, the pattern was transferred to a paper plate and painted using tempera paints.  We are lucky to have a visiting artist who will be teaching our students about African drumming.  The students will look great wearing these at the assembly!

Maasai Beaded Collar 

Artwork with a Medieval Theme

Second grade students had fun creating artwork with a Medieval theme.  I found two of these great lessons at one of my favorite blogs, Deep Space Sparkle.  Here is the link for the painted royalty lesson and you can also find her castle collage lesson there too.  
http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2012/01/09/fairy-tale-kings-and-queens-art-project/

It was fun creating artwork with the same theme using different materials; collage, clay and tempera paint.  

 

Painting Challenge

I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to give my third grade students this challenge and they loved it.  Here is the link where I saw the lesson:  http://www.teachkidsart.net/mixing-100-colors/.  Each student was given the primary colors plus white and asked to see how many colors they could come up with.  At first it seemed impossible but once they took a look at the color wheel and were reminded that they could mix different shades of colors they were off and mixing up a ton of new colors.  They really had a blast and learned a lot about color theory.