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. 

 



Elements of Art

Last year, I decided to try something new.  I always organize my units by one common theme throughout the year.  For example, 1st grade does Elements of Art, 4th grade focuses on Cultures, 3rd grade artists, etc.  Sometimes, especially the littles, they don't really connect our in-class work to our theme.  Back to last year.  I decided to start my first graders off with a 2-day, formal lesson about each element.  Typically I find formal lessons tedious, but I made a worksheet and a Prezi to go with it, including fun videos about color, shapes, etc.  And it worked!  This is one of the best discoveries I have made as a teacher.  When I FORMALLY taught all the elements at once, I had students raising their hands talking about Paul Klee's Castle and Sun, as art that didn't have deep space.  Or they could tell me they saw the primary colors in the art.  Or that nothing looked like it had form, or was round.  Seriously, first graders! Before trying it this way, our conversation would center around the shapes used in Klee's painting, like triangles and squares.  Vast improvement! So I thought I would share my worksheets.  Below are the blank versions (front and back) and a finished example.  I also start the year off this way with 2nd grade, as a review.  

Valentine's Day

Just a few Valentine's things.  I got the popsicle tray idea from another blog Painted Paper - you should definitely check it out.  One of my Kinder classes made these.

These were more of my fantastic, free Styrofoam "canvasses".  They were too small for our Klimt tree project, so I let a class of 1st graders paint a Valentine-themed design on them for fun.  

More 1st Grade Flowers

Here are a few more of our O'Keffe inspired flowers.  These are on flat, 9x9 inch paper.  Drawn in pencil, traced in sharpie, painted with tempera cake paints.  

 1st Grade learned about 3 major artists last week - Georgia O'Keeffe, Vincent van Gogh, and Andy Warhol.  They compared how each artist painted the same subject: flowers.  Then they created their own flower paintings.  Here is my first class to complete their flower "canvas" (packing styrofoam that a parent donates to us).  I painted the edges black to finish them off.