1st Grade Letter Paintings

1st Grade Initial Paintings

 

Class Periods:  4, 40 minute classes

Supplies: Styrofoam canvasses, tempera paints, assorted painting supplies. 

 

I have some of the best parents around at my school.  One parent in particular sends me these amazing Styrofoam pieces.  She works at a hospital, and they use them to ship supplies.  I discovered that tempera paint works great on them, so I don't even have to buy expensive paint.  The kids get to do a "canvas" project without purchasing the costly supplies!

 

Day 1: Introduce the content and practice writing our name as shapes.

 

So this unit is a Common Core tie-in.  The first unit they work on is letters.  I like my first unit to be shapes and lines.  So I've put them together in this fun, initial project.

 

We first look at artists who use simple shapes and lines, and discuss how they use them.  Then we focus on Jasper Johns and how he uses the shapes of numbers in his art.

 

Finally, we used this awesome tutorial from artprojectsforkids.org

 

 

Here's a link to my prezi - https://prezi.com/wkzkl3jasquj/artists-who-use-shapes/

 

 

On day 2 we are inspired by these paintings (I can't remember where I found the image) to create our own BACKGROUNDS for our letters.  I gave them cool colors for this day.

 

 

 

Day 2:  Cool Colors

Day 3: Warm Colored Letters

 

  

On Day 3 we use warm colors and make our letters and other details.

 

 

 

On Day 4 we outline the SHAPE of our letter with black and maybe add some details.