Landscape painting unit with 4th grade - inspiration from Harriet Peck Taylor and Jack Stuppin

           Painting unit begins with simple color explorations. Children are given the three primary colors, taught how to use a palette (to keep it clean), taught how to use a mixing paper and to rinse their brush and they go to town. The only objective for the first day is to create secondary colors, and to fill the page. 

I don't spend much time going over the color wheel aside from explaining how to read it and use it while painting. 

         The class works best when you teach the students to learn how to refill their own water jugs individually and safely. A lot of time is spent at the beginning of the unit going over the set up and clean up routines. 

Having an open ended exploration time is absolutely necessary for all units. It allows me to see what interests the children, what skills they lack and what what they already know. 

     The second class students are given back their original explorations, and asked to paint on them, this time with primaries plus white.  I also show them several paintings I found online that show a painting's progression from beginning to end. 

If you would like me purchase my powerpoint presentation for this unit please send $5.00 via PayPal to Miriam.Cutelis@yahoo.com and specify what language (Spanish or English) you would prefer and which email you'd like the presentation emailed to.  Once I share the presentation with you via Google Docs you can copy and change, add or delete any slides to fit your needs. The presentation will be sent to you within 24 hours of purchase. 

4th graders create Picasso- inspired portraits

I am super proud of these creations. I had to be out of school Tuesday and left some lessons plans for the substitute. The lesson plan for the 4th graders, who normally come to art for an hour and 10 minutes needed to be involved and complex to fill the whole time. I had the teacher read a biography about Picasso to the students first. After, they used a worksheet to help them plan their faces. Last, they used oil pastels to color in the faces and the background. I think I may use this again soon. The results were very pleasing. 

4th graders print out their abstract collagraphs

4th graders were working like busy ants printing out as many prints as they could. Each time they used a new color combination, their eyes would light up once they peeled off that stamp to see the results.

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4th graders pull several GIANT abstract prints .....

The 4th graders are starting a new unit in printmaking. We began the unit by working in teams to create giant abstract shape stamps and pulling a print for each child.

Below you see the whole class in front of their drying GIANT prints

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First displays of the year

These are my first few displays of the year. I try really hard to both show great respect for the work children do by the way I display the kids' work but I also aim to describe the process to the community as a whole.

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5th Graders print their abstract insect parts stencils on their mural paper

In the art room most kids stand while working so they have a better view of their work from above. Kids in the art room work very well independently.

A stencil designed by a 5th grade artist....to be used on our abstract insect part mural.

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1st graders play with organic and geometric shape to create a unity based collage

This is an image of a work created by Victor Brauner. We used our amazing HSA-funded ELMO to look closely at this art. Brauner was a Romanian Surrealist Painter who lived from 1903-1966. This work has abstract images of human beings in which geometric and organic shapes are used.

The great benefit with using the ELMO allows us to really get up close to the work, no matter how tiny they look printed in a book. The children loved all these depictions of humans and animals.

Below is the kids' rendition inspired by Victor Brauner.

Children used colored construction paper, and varied fancy scissors to create both geometric and organic shapes to create a human being. The artist below is cutting out his person on the second day of this project.

The 2 types of shapes. Children were shown various shapes and they had to tell me where it went.
Below is the work completed. Looks very much inspired by the Brauner work we looked at.
A wonderful Murch parent donated these amazing set of wavy scissors. The kids enjoyed making organic shapes from these scissors.