Category Archives: Lesson plans

Fancy ‘Gold’ Frame for Mother’s Day (or anytime)

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Looking for a fun and pretty Mother’s Day project for kindergarteners and first graders? First graders just put the finishing touches on their Mother’s Day project: a shiny gold frame made with pasta! Bonus for primary students: this project reinforces pattern lessons taught in the general ed. classroom. It’s two lessons in one.

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First graders use tag board, pasta and glue to create a picture frame. Look carefully at the pasta: can you see the A-B-C-B-A pattern?

Materials:
Tag board
White glue (Elmer’s)
Template cut to size of art you wish to frame
Dry pasta (we used four different shapes)
Gold spray paint

Prep:
Cut tag board to desired dimension. Center template on tag board and trace with pencil.

Lesson:
Students glue pasta on the outside edge of their tag board. Explain to students we can’t put pasta in the center of the frame because that is where the art will go.

Dry on drying rack. Be sure to dry in horizontal position ( you may even tell the kids to hold the art ‘flat’ as they carry it to the drying rack).

Option 1: create pattern with pasta. We alternated pasta to create an A-B-C-B-A pattern.

Option 2: student’s choice! So fun and unique.

Finishing the project:

Spray the pasta with gold paint. No need to paint the center of the frame. Spray outside!

Insert art and wait for the oohs and aahs!

The pasta/glue bond is quite strong, especially if you encourage kids to use a big dot of glue. In fact, the inspiration for this project came from my son’s kindergarten teacher. I have been carrying around that pasta frame holiday gift for over 10 years, and it is still intact 🙂

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We added the Modigliani Mother’s Day portraits I wrote about in this post.

Modigliani Mother’s Day Portraits

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First grade students made Modigliani portraits with a twist! Instead of a self-portrait, we made portraits of our mothers. We began by viewing images of Modigliani’s portraits and talked about his distinct artistic style, specifically:

  • long neck
  • long, thin nose
  • blank, almond-shaped eyes
  • small, closed mouth

One of Modigliani's many portraits of Jeanne Hebuterne

I prepared this Modigliani PowerPoint, which you may find helpful.

Students began the portrait using Sharpie on white paper, then colored with oil pastels. The portraits are distinguished by hair style and color, eye color, skin color and jewelry. After drawing and coloring their mothers, students made a simple solid background.

First graders make portraits of their mothers in the style of Modigliani. Allow 2-3 40-minute sessions.

 

I have been teaching this project for years and the mothers love it! The first grade teachers hang the framed portraits in their classrooms for the annual Mother’s Day Tea.

I adapted this lesson from a project in the book Drawing Faces (see illustration on cover). I think it is out of print. It is available used, or may be available at your library.

‘Tie-Dye’ Butterfly

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It’s spring! Time for a butterfly art project. How about a lesson that delivers perfect symmetry, color and fun in only one 40-minute session?

Materials:

  • round (basket) coffee filter paper, white (available at the dollar store)
  • Sharpies
  • watercolor markers (we used Crayolas)
  • pencils
  • spray bottle of water

Instructions:

  1. flatten coffee filter
  2. fold filter in half.
  3. use sharpie to draw 1/2 a butterfly on the folded paper.
  4. Trace over all the Sharpie lines again (this helps transfer ink to the other half of the filter paper).
  5. Open the paper. 
  6. Retrace all the faint lines with Sharpie.
  7. Re-fold the paper into its original position.
  8. Color the folded paper using watercolor markers. We used warm and neutral colors for the butterfly, and cool colors for a band around the edge of the paper.
  9. Place folded filter paper on drying rack, colored side facing up.
  10. Spray with water. I try to saturate the paper (note: put some newspaper on the floor under your drying rack to catch the colored drips).
  11. Let dry before removing from rack.

I love the faux tie-dye effect created by the diffused color. I also love the round format. Bonus: coffee filters are available at the dollar store! So this project costs a couple of cents.

Second graders use Sharpie and crayola marker to make symmetric butterflies. Allow one 40 minute session.

Inspiration for the Sharpie/coffee filter/watercolor marker method goes to Kati Oetken at ARTASTIC!

More coffee filter art experiments on this post.

Japanese Design Surprise

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Don’t you just love a beautiful surprise? The third grade made Japanese fans from this post on ARTASTIC! . So much fun! After they dried, I opened the folded paper and discovered these:

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This happy accident occurred because the students
1) completely colored 1/2 the round with watercolor marker
2) probably sprayed a lot of water on the folded filter paper (I let the kids spray their own papers. Not only that – I had a 3rd grader supervise the spraying process!)
3) used white crayon selectively as a resist for clouds, snow and fish scales
4) used new (wet!) sharpies for the black lines

I’m thinking symmetry or reflection project for next year.

Check out all the instructions on Kati Oetken’s ARTASTIC! Blog.

Have you had a beautiful surprise result? Do tell!

Thiebaud “Cakes” Mural (and more!)

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This is a universal truth:  kids love dessert.  Second grade recently completed their Wayne Thiebaud group art mural based on Thiebaud’s famous artwork, “Cakes”.

We began with my Wayne Thiebaud Powerpoint. We discussed repetition of simple shapes, variety, use of thick paint, horizon line and shadow. This year we also discussed halation – the vibrant lines of color Thiebaud uses to outline his work. If you are unfamiliar with halation read this excellent Thiebaud post on Art for Small Hands.

Next we watched a great 7-minute long Thiebaud video from CBS this Morning.  Here is the link.

Materials:

  • Drawing paper, 9″x12″
  • pencil and eraser
  • oil pastels
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • bulletin board paper (allow 5 foot length for 22 students)
  • tempera

Students drew the basic cylinder cake first in pencil, then in oil pastel. We outlined in bright colors.  Because we were making a mural, for consistency students added purple shadows on the right side of their art.

The kids had a fabulous time ‘decorating’ their cakes, again with oil pastel. We had a ‘no words’ rule, but numbers were OK.

Students outline their cakes with vibrant colors

Students cut out their cakes and covered the backs with glue stick.  I arranged the cakes on painted bulletin board roll paper.

Assembling the mural

I made two murals: a 9 foot mural for 45 cakes, and a 5 foot mural for 22 cakes.  Next year I will make one 5-foot mural per class as the big one was beautiful but too unwieldy.

After the art show I will cut apart the mural. The second graders will trim and mount their cakes onto 12″x18″construction paper.

The perfect jewelry for any Thiebaud lesson 🙂

Have fun!

P.S. Want to try a digital Thibaud art activity? Try the National Gallery of Art’s

Thiebaud ‘cake maker’ interactive

UPDATE: NEW! Click here for my new lesson, Wayne Thiebaud Geometric Desserts. New video and Common Core connections.

 

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