Thursday, March 20, 2014

Sunflowers

Kindergarten artists learned about the life artwork and of Georgia O'Keeffe. We spent two sixty minute classes painting these, practicing how to hold the brush, how to keep the brush wet, but not too wet, and how to use the right amount of paint. We began with a paint brush and black paint, no drawing. We used simple lines and shapes to create the outline of our flower. The following week we used red and yellow paint and learned how they make orange. We tried to leave red, yellow and orange in our flowers. Green stems and sky blue finished our backgrounds. Students learned that a background is behind and around the flower, not just a sky that sits at the top of our papers.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

2nd grade 3-d ROBOTS!




Second graders read the book "Robot Zot". We looked carefully at the illustrations and noticed the robot appeared to be 3-D. We could see his front and one of his sides, depending on which way he was facing. He also cast a shadow on the ground next to him. After discussing why people make robots and the kinds of jobs they do, we designed our own original robots out of simple geometric shapes. We then turned our shapes into forms by using parallel diagonal line at the corners of the shapes. We finished these by painting with metallic paints.

Cat in the Hat

Kindergarten artists learned about the art, stories and the life of Dr. Suess. His birthday was on March 2nd. Dr. Suess wrote and illustrated forty-four books. His first book "And to Think that I saw it on Mulberry Street" was rejected by publishers forty three times. We looked at drawings of cat in the hat, finding lines and shapes we knew and recognized. We drew them one simple line and shape at a time.