Georgia O'Keeffe Suncatchers

This project was thanks to a post I found on Mrs. Taylor's Artopolis. It was one of the most complimented projects that we did this year and also one of the easiest!

Thanks to the generous nature of my faculty, I have a large supply of overhead transparencies. With the advent of smart boards, classroom teachers are not using them anymore, so lucky me.... I get all of the leftovers (and save a bundle in my budget in the process!).

I gave each of my PreK students a transparency and a black Sharpie. They wrote their name on the transparency and then returned them to me. I gave each of them a bottle of glue (another supply that I have in large amounts, thanks to my faculty) and showed them how to squirt a large blog of glue onto the transparency (making sure not to go over the edge).

Then the PreK assistant and myself walked around with squirt bottles of food coloring (red, yellow and blue) and squirted 2 drops of each color onto the glue.

I showed the students how to use the handle of a paintbrush to swirl the colors around in the glue. This confused some of them, since we had just learned how to use the paintbrush the right way. The next time I do this with my students, I believe that I will try giving them toothpicks or popsicle sticks to avoid this confusion. Another ah-ha moment, which I will fix next time, is that  when I squirted the 3 primary colors onto their glue, they had a very difficult time knowing when to STOP swirling, so many of them got muddy. Those that had the control to stop, turned out beautiful. Next time- either warm or cool colors.

I placed these onto the drying rack to dry (they actually took 2 days to dry all the way through).

For the next class, the students took a black Sharpie and traced around the outside of their glue, giving them a guide to follow for cutting. They cut along their line and then the adults helped them use a hole punch to create a hole. They were given ribbon to tie through the hole. These were then hung up in the window right outside of the art room, where they caught the morning sun everyday.

After a few days, the transparency began peeling off of the glue. I'm wondering if it might work better if we went ahead and peeled it off completely before adding the ribbon.

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Kinder O'Keeffe Flowers

This is an adaptation of the project that I did with my kindergarten students last year.

Last year's projects: Kindergarten Georgia O'Keeffe

This year:

I decided to cut the paper in half this year and gave each student a 9 x 12" piece of watercolor paper. The size was much more manageable for painting.

When the flowers were dry, I gave each student a template to trace onto the back of their flower. We learned how to hold our scissors and they cut the general shape of a flower from their painting.

I had them glue these onto a piece of black paper.

They added details to their flower with crayons (I think I need to go back to using oil pastels for this part- the crayons did not show up as well as I would have like them to).

Then I gave the students 2 small pieces of green paper and showed them how to cut them into the shape of a leaf.

They glued these on ("just a dot, not a lot") and here are our finished products. Again, thanks to Mr. E for the inspiration on this one!

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Kindergarten O'Keeffe Flowers

 I think this may be my favorite project so far this year- I may even take a couple and frame them for my house! They turned out absolutely beautiful- all thanks to the post that I saw on Art with Mr. E. I saw the flowers that his students had done and had to try it in my room. Success!

We started by drawing a circle in the middle of our paper and 6 lines radiating out from the center.

Then I had plates of paint for each table: 2 colors plus 2 white.

I showed them how to start in the middle of their
paper and pull the paint towards the edge. Some of them got it, others no. However, some of the ones that did not get the "center-out" idea, ended up with the most interesting flowers, so I didn't stress about it.

The hardest part for the students was not having water to rinse their brushes (I probably need to do this lesson before I get into the painting procedures that I have set up for the art room).

The next week,  they used oil pastels to redefine their lines and add details to the center of their flowers.

Thank you, Mr. E!!! I will definitely be doing this lesson again!!!

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Third Grade Sandpaper Prints

Georgia O'Keeffe was the basis for the third graders printmaking project. I started out by reading the book Through Georgia's Eyes by Rachel Rodriguez. We spent some time looking at O'Keeffe's floral paintings and talking about how they were magnified.

For the project, I have a wide variety of old calendar pages that have been laminated. I have jeweler loupes that the students can use to magnify different parts of the print- helping them focus in on aspects of the picture.


 The students practice drawing 2 different flowers in their sketchbooks first. The focus for them is:

1)  fill the entire page with the flower
2) make the flower go off of the page
3) use a variety of tints and shades to color (by using the loupe, they can really see the colors that are in the flower)

Once they have their flowers drawn in their sketchbooks, they choose the one that they like the best.

 I give them a piece of sandpaper (fine-med grain) and they replicate the flower onto the sandpaper using old crayons- I have a really big tub of old, broken crayons that I collect every year (I never throw crayons away) and these are what they use.

I demonstrate how they need to color hard enough to cover the sandpaper. When they are finished, they should not be able to see the brown sandpaper at all.

They can also use their crayons to build colors on top of each other, creating the tints and shades that

 naturally found in the flowers.

When they have colored the entire piece of sandpaper, they bring it to me.

I have an iron plugged in (I used to have an ancient dry-mount press, but when we got our new school, it did not make it into the new building- a sad day for me!), set on Polyester/Wool. I adjust it as I go along.

I iron the crayon onto a piece of white drawing paper (12 x 18) and then staple the sandpaper next to the print.

I used to iron them onto colored construction paper, but the effect was not as dramatic- now I am sticking with plain white paper!

I especially love the sunflowers! Pin It