Carle, Seuss, Art & iPads

This lesson just seemed to emerge over the past few years. It began with a desire to teach my students about mixing colors. I wanted it to messy and fun. we used sponges, brushes, combs, cars, and more to play and explore what colors can do.

 

If you have never tried shaking hands to mix colors, I highly recommend it!

The kids think you just made magic happen!

We ended with lots of hand painted papers, with great colors, and textures. Now what to do with all these messy painting... I have tried a lot of things but keep coming back to Eric Carle. Students (and teachers) gravitate toward his books and become mesmerized by the beautiful artwork he creates.

We sorted the papers into bins based on color.

This year I read "The Mixed-Up Chameleon".

After reading we reviewed shapes, by cutting a large variety of them and playing with putting them together to create our own mixed-up creatures.

In the next class students arranged, rearranged, and glued their pieces together.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do next. My students naturally began coming up with names for their creatures and playing with them at their seats.

 

I got the idea to read "There's a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss. (I had done a project based on this book when I first started teaching elementary art, but had since left it behind)

I had everyone bring their creatures to the front of the room and gather around while I read them the story.

The book ends by saying "I don't care if you believe it, That's the kind of house I live in and I hope we never leave it"

I told the students that it's the kind of classroom we are in and began to point out creatures around the room like....

We talked briefly about rhyming and practiced making nonsense names to rhyme with locations around the room.

I game my kindergartners the iPads (we have 2 so they had to share) and they set out to find locations and snap some pictures.

Lesk on the Desk

Vin in the Bin

Once students had taken a picture or three... they chose a paper and began to draw a background for their creature.

While the class worked on their drawing, I shared their photos on the white board and let them call out and share their creatures name. This was a lot of fun and good for a laugh or 20!

Nissue on the Tissue

Hicks in the Sticks

Nunge in the Sponge

Nash by the Trash

Zool under the Stool

Zane on the Drain

I think it would be a cool addition to utilize a text over photo app to add the name of the creature before printing, but that might take a little time with Kindergarten. Coming up with nonsense names is one thing but spelling them... I don't know if I can even do that.

I was stunned by how many parents came to me and told me their kids talked about this lesson at home. I was even more surprised by how many kids made additional "wockets" at home.

Piet Mondrian with 2nd Grade

I always love to see all the was that art teachers are teaching their students about the life and work of Dutch Painter, Piet Mondrian. 

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43 

This is my 4th year teaching Mondrian to my 2nd Graders and Every year I have done it differently. 

Here is what I did this year...

We, of course, learned about HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL, AND DIAGONAL LINES.

Students used a ruler to create 3 mini artworks. 

Work 1 used only Horizontal and Vertical lines. 

Work 2 used only diagonal lines

Work 3 used ALL 3. 

After drawing their 3 mini works, students traced their designs in Sharpie.

Students practiced using their design eye to decide which spaces to fill in with 

Primary color marker and which spaces to leave blank.

Next students experimented with Painters, paint pen markers from Elmer's, 

to make their works uniquely their own. 

Each student was then given a thin black strip to decide how to mount their 3 finished designs. 

I love how they came out!

Pop art Hearts!!!

I said I would share more... so here is how we made our Jim Dine inspired HEART PAINTINGS!

After reviewing POP ART and looking at Jim Dine's colorful hearts, students choose to draw and cut out one to four hearts. We used masking tape to stick out hears to a piece of white oak tag.

Using a variety of "Valentines" colors we painted part on and off of the hearts. 

Upon removing the hearts we were left with a beautiful heart shape silhouette.

Later we review line styles and fill our hearts with lines.
I think next year I might push this further and have my students look at Zentangles.

Then we used our fingers to had dots and spots of brighter colors.