Hubble Space Telescope: There is color in space!

I want kids to be excited about color. I think color is one of the most exciting elements of art and it can be used to create so many different effects in a student's artwork. Color is all around us, we think clouds are white  but really they are full of greys and purples and yellows and blues and greens. We think the water is blue but it's not, it's full of all sorts of colors and reflections.

In second grade we talked about space and the color that is in space. We discussed the colors that we see when we look at space, and how it seems to be only a couple of colors. Then we talked about the Hubble Space Telescope. We looked at pictures of it and discovered how it worked. ( Hubble Space Telescope website) But what we really spent time looking at was the pictures that it sends back to Earth. Man these pictures have some great color! (Video of Hubble Pictures) This project inspiration came from this blog, check it out! makeitawonderfullife.blogspot.com

The students practiced using chalk pastels. They practiced several techniques that I demonstrated (blending colors together, putting colors on top of each other, making the edges of shapes fuzzy, and using scrap paper to mask an area of their artwork.) and they also just plain got comfortable with the medium.

On the second day of this project, I had several pictures taken from the Hubble Telescope. Again I did a demo to show students how  one of those pictures would translate into a chalk pastel drawing. We discussed how my picture didn't look exactly like the Hubble Telescope pictures and that was okay because we were just using the pictures as inspiration (where we get ideas) rather than trying to copy them. Students went to town and boy did a lot of them turn out great! What an awesome project to explore color. The students were so excited to learn all about how the telescope worked and they really got into the idea of color in space. I loved this project, easy and inspiring and definitely full of color!

Colors!

Kindergarten students are learning all about Primary and Secondary Colors!
We spent three days for each class on a Primary Color. We had Yellow Day, Red Day, and Blue Day. We painted using each color, after brainstorming a list of things that were each color. The kids had a lot of fun and it helped with really getting them used to the procedure for painting.

Then we started talking about Secondary Colors and this is the part I really want to talk about today because the kids just had a blast! I wanted them to watch Secondary Color mixing happen and in several different ways, not just mixing paint or coloring them. So we did Secondary Color Handshakes and we did Secondary Color Cookies.

For the handshakes, each student got to put a Primary Color on their hand and then go find someone who's hand was a different color and shake hands so that the colors mixed together. We surprisingly had very little mess. They loved how it felt and how it looked.

For the cookies, each student got their own graham crackers and red, yellow, and blue frosting and we mixed our frostings on our cookies to make orange, green, and violet cookies. Not only did they look cool, but they tasted great. The hope is they will remember that lesson for awhile!

Everyone loves Grumpy Cat!

We're easing our way into color. The 4th graders are doing an awesome project this year! They are studying Pop Art. We learned that Pop Art involves (among other things); lots of color and images that are popular at the time the artwork is made. We took a look into the life of one of the most famous Pop Artists, Andy Warhol. There's are great little music video about his life and Pop Art that we used (found here). **Warning, it does contain a Justin Bieber song that caused some uproar in my class, both positive and negative.**

 

Then we looked at Grumpy Cat memes. If you haven't seen Grumpy Cat yet, you need to click here to check him out. Some of the memes are inappropriate, but I found several that I could show the kids and we could get a good laugh out of it. Many students recognized him and had other examples to share with the class. We discussed how Grumpy Cat is a popular icon in today's world. Then I showed them the Marilyn Monroe piece that Andy Warhol did with multiple drawings of Marilyn, each colored a differently and explained that we would be doing this with Grumpy Cat.
We then spent two class periods dividing our paper into four equal squares and drawing our Grumpy Cats (directions courtesy of Kathy Barbro). During the second class, we took a break to review what we knew about the color wheel and Primary and Secondary colors. Then we talked about color schemes. We focused on Monochromatic, Analogous, and Complementary color schemes. Students were instructed that each cat had to feature a different color scheme that they had just learned. The fourth cat could be colored whatever they want. We're still in the process of finishing these. I will post some of the finished product next week!

 

In other news, our first grade students finished their Louise Nevelson sculptures and they look awesome! Check them out!

 

 

Louise Nevelson Assemblage Sculptures

As we continue looking at shapes, the first grade students are digging a little deeper than just circle, square, and triangle. We started talking about how other shapes, maybe shapes without names could be a part of our artwork. We talked about what a sculpture was and what it means to make an assemblage. In order to look at all of these things, we framed the lesson by learning about famous sculpture artist Louise Nevelson. I found a great PowerPoint online (click here) which I just edited a little bit for our purposes. Then we used this great Smart board activity (found here) to practice placing found objects in our assemblages and how they should lay close to one another, fill up the space, and may even overlap or go off the page!

 

 

Then students began the gluing. I had a lot of wooden shapes from previous art teachers and someone donated a bunch of Styrofoam pieces. I thought, what a perfect time to have these donated! The kids are still in the process of gluing down their found objects. I'll be sure to post a follow up to these awesome Louise Nevelson-inspired assemblage sculptures!

Shapes!

The first thing I wanted to do with shapes this year is to have the younger students cut them out! Not only are they studying shapes are learning about them for the first time, but they can also use this time to develop their fine motor skills. Many kindergarten and even first grade students do not know how to hold scissors correctly or control paper and scissors together in order to cut out squares, circles and triangles.
Both kindergarten and 1st grade students practiced cutting this year. They did squares and triangles on their own with only a small amount of guidance on how to hold the scissors and how to turn their paper. For circles I had copied paper with circles drawn on them so that the students could follow the lines. For circles we also talked about how to hold your scissors and turn your paper for better results.

As you can imagine we then had a ton of cut out shapes! What to do!?

 

The first grade students turned theirs into name tags. They simply glued shapes on to their name (pre-written) on a black piece of paper and then I laminated them.

The kinders used their shapes to decorate stuffed paper bags and turn them into houses! They had a blast and got very imaginative. The houses turned out awesome!

 

Landscapes... another Visible Thinking Strategy! (Also an update on 4th Grade)

So we're talking about Shapes now! And we're using Shapes to do all sorts of things from cutting them out to drawing people with them. The second grade class is going to draw a landscape using shapes. But first I wanted to see how much they remembered from 1st grade about landscapes. So we talked briefly about what remembered about landscapes and what a landscape included. In every class someone brought up foreground, middle ground, and background! Success!! They must have learned well last year. We talked about that a little more in depth. Then to get everyone really focused we did a Visible Thinking Strategy called See, Think, Wonder.

Students did this in table groups with one writer per table but everyone sharing ideas. They looked at a piece by Thomas Cole called The Oxbow and wrote down what they saw, what they thought about, and what they wondered about as they viewed this piece. Here are some of the results:



Also an update on 4th grade perspective relief sculptures, they turned out so well! Here are a few of the finished product.

Visible Thinking

At our elementary school, we use a Visible Thinking Initiative. This is a framework that we use to focus on the individual student as well as the collective thinking and collaboration of the entire class. It really shows students and teachers a tangible view of students’ thinking. and it helps to uncover misconceptions, prior knowledge, reasoning ability, and degrees of understanding. To read more about Visible Thinking Strategies click HERE



In the art room, we used a strategy called Chalk Talk to learn about shapes with the kindergarten and 1st grade students. Each table in the room had a laminated sheet of paper on it, with a certain shape drawn at the top. Students spent the one entire class period rotating around the room and adding a drawing to each paper. The catch? They could only draw using the shape at the top of the paper. The could only add to what was already present, not erase anything that anyone else had drawn, even if the paper got a little full. This was a great way for everyone to participate and work together and to introduce shapes. But also it really served as a tool for me to observe my students drawing a basic element of art and have the time to take note of which students will need assistance in learning to better draw their shapes. Killing two birds with one stone and what's more the kids really liked doing it and seeing the results!