Texturing and Tearing

Kindergartners and 1st graders recently completed some torn paper collage landscapes. We focused on texture for a while and are now looking at space and forms, so these collages served as a good transition to introduce space through overlapping.

After students created textured paper with crayons and texture plates, we got to tearing. When I ripped my first textured paper during my demonstration their faces got all concerned. "Mr. Fleming, why did you rip your paper?" they cried. "Because it's fun. Join me. Lets make some clouds". Before long, they loved it, and went to town ripping out cloud shapes, mountain shapes, tree shapes, hills, you name it. Of course, I did have a student or two that said "I can't do it". Of course I replied with "can't do what, rip paper?" They told me that they could not rip paper into the shapes of things. I had to coerce them into trying it. After all, it's just torn up paper it is not meant to look perfect. Even the reluctant tearers got the hang of it and had fun.

This assignment took two class times. One 9x12 blue construction paper, two 6x9 pieces of construction paper in two different colors, white paper from my scrap paper box, texture plates, glue, and crayons.

Paint Party 2016 Volume 2

I have been wrapping up our second run of paint parties as a class reward for good behavior. For 3 years, I have felt like dealing with behavior has been a major time killer for my art class. Paint party rewards seem to be helping a ton. Class behaviors have improved dramatically. Kids want to paint. 

In case you missed my last post about paint parties, here is the run down. We have a rotating Friday at my school; which means Monday classes see me one Friday a month, Tuesdays one Friday a month, and so forth. That means each class sees me one extra time once a month. I use this to my advantage. During the four visits prior to a Friday visit to art, classes earn points (5 possible per day). If they get 15 out of 20 points by their Friday in art, they get a paint party.

Essentially, a paint party is just a paint day, but those don't happen often at my school due to large numbers in the classroom and no running water/sink. Painting all day on one day of the week allows me to set up once and take down once. It makes it easy on me, and keeps it energetic and fast paced for the students.

This go around our theme was outside places. I showed the students a photograph that illustrates atmospheric perspective well. We talk about overlapping, how things look smaller farther away, how the color gets lighter for things farther away. We have had some great discussions after asking the question "Why does the color get lighter in the background?" My older grades which have studied the water cycle usually come to the conclusion that evaporation has something to do with it.

Each table received black, white, and one secondary color of paint. During demonstration, students learned about the tints and shades of values. We started with the sky, and worked our way forward with overlapping since we only have the paper on our tables to clean our brushes with. 

Students were allowed to create a painting of any kind of environment they wanted as long as it was outdoors. We even had the opportunity to talk about monochromatic color schemes.

Though this student did not use their color, I love the expressive quality of this painting. Awesome overlapping and rhythm.

This was one of the most rewarding one day assignments I have had in my classroom. What successful rewards do you have for class wide behavior? Please share.

Where would you want to visit?

While going through pictures to create another post, I realized that I had not posted on this 4th grade lesson.  This is the third year that I have taught this lesson and have loved watching it evolve. As the first lesson of the year, I use it to teach about kinds of lines, color, and space. I was surprised this year when asking my 4th graders about environments, how unfamiliar they were with the word "environment."  

We looked at landscape paintings from a few artists, the two we looked at the most were David Bates and Ando Hiroshige. While looking at the paintings, students identified details of setting. They had to describe ways that the artist used color to show time of day, climate, and season. 

This year I found myself pushing the idea of overlapping to create space, as well as adding details to create more interest for their viewers. Students were prompted to choose any kind of environment they would like to visit; actual environments, fantasy environments, even space. The choice was theirs. We had a lot of beaches and mountains, a few outer space scenes, but the fun ones were places like Donut Land, Pizza Land, and a few Candy Lands.  

All students worked on 9x12" drawing paper, and used colored pencil. Always looking for ways to improve, feel free to comment and let me know if you have any ideas.