Second Grade Day of the Dead

We started out by looking at a presentation on the Day of the Dead and discussing where and when the Day of the Dead is celebrated. We focused this project on the Day of the Dead calaveras (skulls). They children practiced drawing their skull in their sketchbooks and colored them using complementary colors.

There were 3 choices for projects:

The first one was a calavera made out of Claycrete. The students mixed the claycrete with water and glue and formed the shape of the skull. Once it was dry, they painted it 1 color with acrylic paint. They added facial features with sequins, pipe cleaners and other materials that they found interesting.

The second project was a calavera in a frame. They drew the skull onto a transparency and painted it with white acrylic paint. They turned the transparency to the back side and used Sharpies to decorate it.

The third project that the students could choose was a printing project. The student drew their calavera onto a piece of cardboard. They traced it with white glue and let it dry. Then they made three different prints using the cardboard. The first print was a crayon rubbing. The second print was done by rolling ink onto the cardboard and creating a print on white paper. For the last one, they covered the cardboard with a piece of aluminum foil and then rubbed the foil so that the glue created a bas relief. They used Sharpies to color the aluminum.

Pin It

First Grade Giacometti

We started this project by doing practice drawings, using the maneqins. The students posed the mannequin and then practiced drawing the basic shapes of the body (lots of ovals) and working on basic proportion. We talked about how the head is smaller than the torso, the leg is larger than the arm, etc.

For this project, we had 2 choices.

The first choice that the students had was making a sculpture. I gave each child a piece of aluminum foil. They cut the foil (Foil armature) and then wadded the foil up to create a basic human figure. They covered the figure with tape and then attached it to a cardboard base.

They used plaster strips to completely cover the figure. Once it was dry, they painted it with tempera paint and then used a contrasting color to add patterns.

The second choice for this project was a collage. The students created a background paper by dripping liquid watercolors onto the page. They used a straw to blow the paint around the paper, filling the page from top to bottom and side to side.

Then they cut out the basic shapes of the human body and glued them on, using either warm or cool colors.

The figures were decorated by using hole punches and scissors to cut out a variety of lines.

Pin It

First grade Cezanne's

The 3 choices that the students had for creating a Cezanne inspired project were:

Paper mache fruit- The students practiced drawing a variety of different fruits by looking at samples that I had bought at Hobby Lobby. They worked on getting the right shapes and making it large. Once they had their pictures ready, they uised newspaper and tape to create the basic form of the fruit/vegetable that they wanted to create. They covered this with colored tissue paper to make it look more realistic. I placed a variety of the fruits and veggies into baskets to create fruit bowls.

The second Cezanne-inspired project was a still-life. I placed a variety of objects on the still-life table and the showed the students how to draw them objects so that they were touching (not sitting next to each other). They traced these with black marker and then used color sticks to color them.

The last project that I had set up was a bluebonnet project. I had some bluebonnets that I had found at Hobby Lobby set up on the table. To help the students draw the flowers large, I created viewfinders for them. This helped them focus on the petals and the colors in the flowers. They drew the flowers on white paper and then traced them with black glue. Once the glue was dry, they used liquid watercolor to add the colors. I limited the colors that were in their pallette, by only giving them a variety of blues and greens.

Pin It

Kinder Jasper Johns

This is a project that I have done before with kindergarten, however, in keeping with giving the students more choices and teaching them to make artistic choices for themselves, I had 3 versions of this project going at one time.

The first project started out by using tempera paint (in either warm or cool colors) to paint a folded piece of paper. Once the painting was done, they used oil pastels in the opposite color scheme to create lines in each box (wavy, zig zag, dotted, straight, etc). Then I had the letters A-H that they traced onto construction paper. They cut them out and glued them in order.

The second project used color sticks to color their paper. They used markers to create their lines and then they glue die cut letters on each square.

The third version of this project used oil pastels to color their paper, tempera paint to create their lines and then glue die cut numbers in each square.

Pin It