Laurel Burch Inspired Cats - 1st Grade

Laurel Burch for First Graders

I was inspired by all the Laurel Burch projects I kept seeing on Pinterest lately, and thought that my own version of them would be perfect for my next lesson with the Holt Elementary first graders.  By the way, if you are an educator and haven't yet discovered Pinterest to help you plan your art lessons, you've been missing out!  If you need someplace to start, click here to see my board for kids art projects.  I've been collecting for quite awhile, so there's a lot of inspiration there :)  Anyway, on to the lesson!!  Since I only have my first graders for 30 minutes each time I see them, I broke this lesson down into 2 sessions.  If you have a good hour with your kiddos, this could be done all at once, as long as they don't get the wiggles too bad.

Materials for Day 1:

• Colored 9x12 construction paper (we used soft pink, blue and lavender)

• Sharpie markers, or something similar...the regular thickness

• Colored chalk or soft pastels

Materials for Day 2:

• black 9x12 construction paper

• white colored pencils or crayons

On Day 1:

- Introduce Laurel Burch to the kids - show a slideshow of her art, or bring in those cat earrings made from her art that you've had since the 80's!

- Lead a step-by-step drawing of a cat sitting down. (Kids work on the colored papers, with pencil first).  Start with a big letter "D", then add a cat's head with ears overlapping the top of the big "D".  Add nose, eyes, whiskers.  Show how to make the back leg, then draw a short vertical line down for the front feet. Add a tail.  

- Talk about PATTERN, and what exactly makes a pattern a pattern. Ask, "Is one circle a pattern?" No, it must be a REPEATING shape to be a pattern.  (Hitting those art benchmark words, eh? eh?) Have the kids draw patterns on their cats' backs. 

- Trace it all with sharpie.

- Color in with soft pastels or chalk, demonstrating first how they can use their fingers to blend gently.... then their sharpie lines show through! I didn't let my students use black or brown.... bright only!

On Day 2:

- On the black paper, have kids make a border to frame their cats, and draw patterns in the borders.

- Make a "hill" on the bottom, inside the border so the cat has a place to sit.

- Make a starry night sky with a moon and planets if they want, in the background above the hill.

- Cut out and glue the cats down!

The kids had a blast with these.... some were blowing kisses and naming their cats.  So. Stinkin. Cute.