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. 

 



Kinder Owls

I have to say a special thank you to Deep Space Sparkle for the inspiration for these Kindergarten owls.  So cute!  I loved them all. 

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.  

Klimt Trees

I have a WONDERFUL parent who sends me all kinds of trash from where she works.  She started sending me these cool, styrofoam packing pieces a while ago.  I thought I was going to have to order acrylic paint to work on them, but one day I tried my normal, CHEAP, tempera and it worked great!  Then I just had to collect enough of them for a whole grade level to use and decide what project to do.

I have always been a HUGE fan of Gustav Klimt.  I thought some swirly trees would be really dynamic.  So, we started by looking at his art and the work of contemporary artists who are obviously inspired by him.

I gave them three COOL COLOR options, and had them paint the background one solid color.  Okay, this year we actually ended up with pink b/c I accidentally ordered magenta, not purple paint.  But they still look nice.

Then I gave them red, orange, yellow, and pink paint (warm colors) to add background swirls and designs.

 Finally, we used black paint to make our swirly trees - black so it would give us more CONTRAST.  I know, there's no gold, and that is the quintessential Klimt detail.  BUT...did you know the Tree of Life was a MOSAIC and Klimt used opals and other semi-precious gemstones as part of his design?  So, instead of gemstones we used sequins and tacky glue.  So fun!

More Birds

More Birds

I actually teach at two schools and tend to try out the same projects in different ways.  I love these birds, too.  We drew them on white paper and painted them using tempera cakes.  I did this with 3rd and 5th grade - two of these are third graders artworks....wow!  Good luck guessing which ones.  I teach the MOST talented kiddos.

This student actually used chalk

 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.