First Grade Cityscapes

This lesson was the first grader version of this self portrait lesson that I did with all the older kids (grades 2-5) during my last residency.  I figured that we'd use all the same materials and techniques, just with a different subject matter.  Not that first graders couldn't do self portraits, but probably not the proportions lesson that I went through with the older kids. Anyway, here's what we did:

Materials:

• white paper

• star sequins

• sharpies in dark colors

• "bleeding" art tissue cut into small squares

• paper scraps for windows and half sheets of black (cut the long "hot dog" way)

1.) Have kids draw "space-y" things in sharpie on their white papers. Planets, spaceships, stars, etc. etc. Pretty cute to see what they come up with here. 

2.) Have them lay out their tissue paper squares over their drawings. Come around and spray water on the finished ones. Peel off tissue paper. If it's not colored enough, this process can be repeated, for a more saturated, layered effect. 

3.) When these are dry, show a couple cityscape examples and talk about shapes they could use for their skyline silhouettes. Hand out a half sheet of black to each kid and have them draw and cut out their city skylines in one piece if they can. Glue little windows onto them, and add sequins in the sky if you want. Super cute!

Georgia O'Keefe Art Lesson Plan

 5th Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

This is a go-to lesson for me and here's why:  This lesson works for any grade... really!  I've done this with Kinders up to 8th graders, and have found they all can be successful at it.  They turn out really nice and are great for brightening hallways, the kids learn about an artist and get an introduction to observational drawing. Read on if you want to see how I do it!

You will need:

- Assorted fake flowers - buy these once and you can use them for years!  Michaels always has sales on their flowers, too. 

- Oil Pastels or crayons

- Watercolor paints

- White paper.... big or regular sized... how much time do you have??

Lesson Plan:

1.) Introduce Georgia O'Keefe. Wikipedia some stuff about her life, and/or find a youtube video about her. There's tons of stuff out there. 

2.) Show pictures of Georgia O'Keefe's flower paintings. Ask the kids what they observe about them, and what they think she's doing differently from other artists. If you can get it out of them, you're looking for them to say she's painting them really big! Explain that part of what made her art famous, was that she painted flowers in EXTREME CLOSE-UP instead of the typical view of flowers in a vase on a table or something. 

3.) Talk about the difference between a CLOSED COMPOSITION and an OPEN COMPOSITION. (Closed means nothing's going off the page and everything's contained in the picture boundaries, Open composition is the opposite). Explain that they will be doing an Open Composition today.  Show them your example, and tell them there's one rule when they're drawing their flowers: Their flower must be SO BIG that it touches at least 3 SIDES OF THEIR PAPERS. This is a hard one for some kids to get.... a lot of kids tend to want to draw everything tiny. This is a good stretch for some, and gets them out of their comfort zones. 

4.) Hand out art supplies and work!  Give each kid one of the fake flowers to draw.  If you're working with older kids, remind them to look for color variations and tiny details and shapes they might see in their flowers - work on those observation skills!! Draw first in oil pastel, cover with watercolors. You might emphasize the use of a contrasting color in the background to really "pop" their flowers.

5.) Let dry, then hang up somewhere boring that needs some LIFE and COLOR!

3rd Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

3rd Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

5th Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

3rd Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

5th Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

5th Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

Pop Art Lesson with 3rd Grade

I love using Pinterest for many reasons.  It satisfies a need for stimulation without having to really think about anything.  Almost calming in it's chaos.  Pinterest is where I got my AMAZING recipe for St. Patty's Guiness and Bailey's infused cupcakes (almost time to bust that one out again!).  I love it.  If you're a teacher or an art teacher and on Pinterest, you know the abundance of lesson plan ideas on there.  You've probably come across those Kandinsky circle projects about 1000 times.  Usually, I like to tweak the lesson plan ideas I get from there, combining with other lessons, adding or subtracting certain materials, etc.  But this lesson is straight-up Pinterest, with a bit of added art school/art history flair from me. The original link can be found here.  

Pop Art Mugs

Supplies:

• Big white construction paper (12 x 18")

• Oil Pastels 

• Watercolors

Lesson:

1.) Discuss "Pop Art" (short for "Popular Art") movement.  It was the late 1950's, early 60's response to the early 50's Abstract movement.  Pop artists did not care for abstract art; they wanted to produce art that actually looked like something.  Pop Artists starting producing art that contained consumer products, comics, mass media and advertising - things that everyone would recognize.

2.) Show some pictures of Pop Art: Andy Warhol, Wayne Theibaud, Roy Lichtenstein, etc. Ask kids for their observations.  Note that Warhol often repeated images over and over, though slightly tweaked each time. 

3.) DEMO and work time!: Show how to draw an ellipse correctly - no pointed sides, only rounded! Show how to draw a cup with the sides angling inwards and the bottom also ROUNDED and not flat. Explain how the oil pastels will resist the watercolor, so they should not be filling in areas with their oil pastels, rather drawing patterns.  They should leave their cups blank with no designs.  Lead students through folding their paper to get 6 even sections, then outlining fold lines with black pastel. Draw a cup in each section, with a table underneath it. Make patterns in each area, except cups. Fill in areas with watercolor. Voila! Pop Art cups. These turned out really beautiful and we only had a 45 minute class to complete the entire lesson and project! 

Matisse Still Lives

It's the end of November already and that means posting about this month's art lessons!  Here is the lesson I did with 3rd grade. (Look for more posts to come about my 2nd and 1st grade projects!) Read on if you'd like step-by-step instructions for this lesson. 

MATISSE STILL LIFE

1.) Introduce Matisse to the students. Show a short slideshow of his still lives. Ask kids what they noticed. What was similar about all these/how do we know it's the same artist? Make sure they notice: color palette, texture and patten elements, the thick black outlines in a lot of his work. 

2.) Set up still lives on each table. I used silk flowers in vases and fake fruit. Talk about how still lives were studies of composition, how an artist arranges objects on a page. 

3.) Hand out small sections of cut wrapping paper and have kids glue them down and cut off access to make their "tables".

4.) Kids draw still lives in thick black sharpies.

5.) When they're ready to paint, they can use tempera. (I use those little white round kids palettes with the wells all the way around.)

October Art Lessons

I've decided to start blogging about the art lessons I'm doing with my students every month.  I teach 2nd and 3rd, and have recently added 1st grade as well.  I love to read other art teacher blogs, and thought I would add myself into the mix.  Maybe I can inspire a few other teachers out there! So look for lesson posts at the end of every month for some more ideas this year.  Hope you enjoy!

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TIM BURTON HAUNTED HOUSES

For my 3rd grade October lesson, we did haunted houses inspired by the art and movies of TIM BURTON! If you'd like to try this lesson, read on!

here's what you will need:

- yellow, purple and orange construction paper

- thin and thick line black pens (sharpies work well, just make sure to put scrap paper underneath kid's work areas... sharpies can bleed through and stain desks!)

- glue sticks

- (optional) a "Principles and Elements of Art" poster

Prep: 

- Cut yellow and orange sheets in half. Students only need half a sheet of one of these colors or their choice. 

Lesson:

- Introduce the principles and elements poster and explain that for each lesson, we will be learning about another principle or element of art.

- Introduce Tim Burton and give a super short bio (wikipedia him!).

-Show slideshow of a few Tim Burton character designs, art and scenes from his movies. Ask students to be thinking about what makes his art look like his art, but hold their comments till the end.

- Ask students what they observed during the slideshow.

- Go back to principles/elements poster and explain how Tim Burton uses "Positive and Negative Space".

Project:

- Talk with students about what makes a house look haunted. (Ex.: pointy shapes, tall and skinny house, ghosts, old and broken looking, etc.)

- Students cut out moon shapes out of their half sheets of orange or yellow paper and glue to the top of their purple sheets.

- Sketch their houses in pencil first

- Small details in skinny black pens, use thicker sharpies to fill in larger areas.

FOLK ART BLACK CATS

For my 2nd grade October lesson, we did black cats inspired by FOLK ART! If you'd like to try this lesson, read on!

Here's what you will need:

- White paper

- Oil pastels

- Watercolors

Lesson:

- Introduce concept of Folk Art.  (Art that is usually made by indigenous cultures. Rather than “fine art” (art that goes in galleries) It is usually on useful items or for decoration (baskets, on pots, etc.). Usually they are not trying to make things look “real”.)

- Show slideshow of examples of Folk Art from around the world. Ask students to hold their comments till the end.

- Ask students what they observed during the slideshow.

Project:

- Tell students that there are a few rules for this project:

#1 They must draw a border on their pieces.

#2 They must draw the cat inside that border as big as they can fit it.

- Students draw in oil pastels, without coloring everything in.

- Paint over drawings with watercolors.

Art in the Jail

Yesterday was a unique work day.  Instead of my normal schedule, I went to a place called The Detention Center.

I had signed up along with 6 other interns to help out with an art day event that the Restorative Justice folks had been planning at the jail (not state prison...more of a holding center for people awaiting trial).  Usually, the art classes that Restorative Justice (a branch within the Mural Arts Program) holds, are either at the state prison, the juvenile detention center, or the work-release facility.  The Detention Center though, needed some art too.  The classes are usually a series of 10-weeks and are actual instruction in general art.  The event I was helping out at, was planned to be more of a free-for-all style, art making, creative day for the inmates. There would be no formal instruction, just tables set out with projects and materials to work on, and us there for encouragement.  We all were asked to come up with ideas for projects the men could do, and my first thought was of a project I love doing with my students as a supplement to whatever wall mural we're working on - a cut-paper mural!

These were some cut paper murals that I've done with kids in the past.  All you need is a big sheet of butcher paper (I like blue - doubles as a sky and/or water), some construction paper, glue and scissors.  I use this sometimes to occupy whatever kids aren't painting on the actual mural at the time.  Kids love it, it teaches collaboration and team-working skills, and teachers love to display them.  So at my table, I was going to have the inmates make one of these, of Philly.

My friend, Dorothy is in town right now, so she tagged along with me yesterday, too.  A good way to spend an afternoon, right?  We arrived at the detention center in conservative dress, were patted down and put all our art supplies through the x-ray machine, and were led to what they called their library (with not one book on the many empty bookshelves).  There were 50 inmates waiting for us, who had signed up for the event.  We explained the projects: there would be a table each for my mural, sketching, card-making, and origami.  The men got up and moved around to the table of their choosing.  The ones sitting at Dorothy and my table, were chatty and engaged.  They seemed really glad to be talking to us, suggesting places to see in Philly, telling us some crazy stories, and asking us about ours.  At first they were really hesitant to start, afraid to "do it wrong" (same situation as my students oftentimes).  We had printed out pictures of the Philly skyline, so they were glad to have that as inspiration for the buildings they made out of the brightly colored paper.  After watching Dorothy and I start to work, they started getting into it themselves.  They combined colors interestingly, cut out intricate little window shapes, created depth by overlapping buildings, and made little billboards and signs of Philly places.  I was impressed by their enthusiasm and abilities.  One guy was telling us about how he's on "Psych meds" but doesn't actually take them (shh, don't tell), and how amazed he was that he was "feeling calm" and not "seeing red" at the moment.  Haha...uhhh....good?  I wish I could show you how their final piece turned out.  They didn't allow phones or cameras inside, or I would have taken pictures.  All glued onto the butcher paper was a big central river with a bridge over it, trees on either side, and buildings of all colors and shapes in the background, and clouds in the sky.  It really turned out awesome.  Everyone who worked on it signed it and shook our hands at the end, thanking us for coming out.  We were allowed to leave their mural taped up to the wall in that overwhelmingly boring room.  It felt good to leave that in there...a little bright spot. 

I was nervous in the beginning, to do this.  I thought it would be scarier than it ended up actually being, though.  I think the inmates were really glad to have us there - a change in their mundane schedules at the very least, and a chance for the artistically inclined to have access to some materials to make something great, at the very best.  Overall, a good experience and I'm glad I did it!

Next blog I really WILL type up the ghost story, I promise!

Corie

Peter Max Artist Lesson for Grades 3 - 6

This is a lesson about the artist, Peter Max. I like this lesson for 3rd graders up to 6th graders. This is harder for the littler kids to really get into, but older kids LOVE doing this one. Here is my lesson plan:

• First, talk to the kids about: Who is Peter Max?  He was an artist whose work got popular in the 1960‘s.  Ask them, "what comes to mind when you think about the 60's?" You may get "peace signs!", "Hippies!", etc. Then you can talk about his imagery that he used that spoke to this time period.
•  Talk about how Peter Max did things like album covers, posters for concerts and events, and other illustrations. Ask the kids, "What is the difference between an illustrator and other kinds of artists?" Explain: Illustrators create art from other people’s ideas, fine artists create art from their own. Illustrators get paid by other people  to make their ideas come alive, visually.  Children’s books, magazines, product packaging, etc., all use illustrators to tell a story. 
• Show examples of Peter Max's work in a computer slideshow. Ask kids to hold their comments until the end of the presentation, but to be thinking about what do all of these pictures have in common? What do you notice that keeps showing up in a lot of these pictures? How do we know it’s the same artist? At the end, take comments from kids and talk about Peter Max's style and how it is unique.  Hopefully the kids notice these things: He made lots of heavy outlines in black. Stars. sun rays. doves. people. neon. BRIGHT and FLAT colors. 
• Mention: He was interested in astronomy (study of the cosmos) and so thats why he had lots of stars and planets in his art. 

Explain the procedure for the project: First, do pencil drawings. They must include a sun and/or stars in a composition that is mostly sky. Then, outline everything in black sharpie. Color everything in with markers and highlighters.

These are what some of my kids have come up with. They turned out amazing, I think!!! I LOVE doing this project. The kids get SO into this. I think Peter Max's style lends itself perfectly to kids projects. 

I hope some of you out there can use this lesson plan and enjoy!

Stars and sun rays,

Corie