Grunge Tigers -A Mixed Media Art Lesson

I found this idea online by googling "tiger art." I was led to this wonderful blog entitled SmartArt, and a grunge tiger lesson I decided to adapt for my class. Being self-proclaimed tigers, this was a fitting activity. Everyone worked really hard and had a great time getting messy. We did our first drawings and paintings on day 1, and followed up with with accents and splatter on day 2.

First, we looked up pictures of tigers to get an idea of face shape and other tiger attributes. We noticed that tigers had a mouth that looked like an upside down "m", with a bearded chin. They also had varying stripe patterns on their faces, and triangle-like ears.

We drew in pencil first, then went over the lines using Sharpies because we know that Sharpies will resist the water colour paint.

After we covered all of our pencil lines with marker, we broke out the water colours. Students were encouraged to use bright colours!

After, we did a wash for the background, where students learned how to evenly spread colour using water colours. Then students used stencils, to add some bling to their tigers. 

Then it was time to add the 'grunge'. We decided to create a splatter wall to protect the floors and passersby from rogue paint. We used tempera for the splatter, and our expert splatterer (you can see him admiring his student's work below), taught his technique which involved flicking the paint brush at the paper with the aid of your index finger.

Very excited to get messy!

Piet Mondrian and Keith Haring Mashup

I have been terrible about keeping up with my blog! The Tigers of room 204 have still been creating amazing things! I hope to get caught up with all the wonderful doings by these amazing third graders!

I was inspired by Pinterest, a favourite place to scour for new and interesting activities! In this art lesson we created mash-ups, combining the works of Keith Haring and Piet Mondrian.

We were exploring artists who expored with line and colour. We looked at the lines and colours of Piet Mondrian, and the expression in Keith Haring's work. Students manipulated pre-cut strips of black paper (I recommend pre-cut strips for grade 3 and under). They created squares and rectangles using the strips. They had to make descisons about where to cut and how to line up their shapes. They used rulers to help them keep their lines level.

Students were then encouraged to only use primary colours, in the style of Piet Mondrian. They could use crayon, chalk or oil pastel, pencil crayon or marker.

Then we looked at Keith Haring's work, and learned about action and movement. Students created their people, coloured, cut and added them to their 'Mondrian'. 

They then added lines to show movement and direction.

Aboriginal Dot Art

To enhance our studies of Early Settlers, we thought it would be fun to study the art of different groups of Aboriginals. For these dot paintings, students chose a symbolic animal -one with which they related or shared similar traits. We researched animal symbolism to help inspire us.

Students made a stencil, and coloured it in using black paint. They then created a design or pattern using only dots. These dots were made easier by the use of a Q-tips! The results were pretty amazing.

Warm and Cool Colours

I adapted this lesson from one I found on Pinterest. Here students experiment with the Artist's Toolkit, exploring warm and cool colours. We discovered which colours are warm and which are cool, and how we can use these colours to show temperature, time of day and even emotions!

We used pencil to draw, black oil pastel to outline and chalk pastels to colour in the scenery. 

We discussed the characteristics of a landscape and the differences between the background and foreground. Students learned that by layering objects in our pictures they appear further away. 

Students had the choice to use warm colours in the sky (background) and cool colours in the (foreground) valleys and mountains. 

We faced some challenges along the way. Some students needed more explicit modelling when it came to making concentric circles. Some made the connection to the circle continuing behind the mountains and around the other side invisibly. Others did not see this connection and drew "C's" that were disconnected. Some students made their concentric circles very skinny, and therefore plentiful. This made it very difficult to colour in.

Blending and smudging pastels is very messy. Students were advised to hold onto a paper towel to rub their fingers on, and to wash their hands often. They were reminded not to rest their hands on the paper while colouring so as to not smudge the colours across the paper.

When I saw similar lessons on Pinterest, the first thing I noticed was that there are many examples of the same artwork, in that the students simply reproduced the teacher's example. I try not to do too many examples, for hope that they will apply the skill taught and make their artwork their own. Then, I worry afterwards that the pictures are going to become the same pictures kids usually draw, and the skill will be lost. 

I had to take a step back and ask myself what I hoped my students learned from this assignment. Did I want them to learn to simply copy a design style, or actually create a style of their own? I wanted them to learn the difference between foreground and background, I wanted them to layer objects so that objects that were further away were hidden behind objects in the foreground, I wanted them to learn the difference between warm and cool colours, and I wanted them to experiment with pastels. If the pictures became full of birds, trees, and flowers, then so be it!

My suggestion to the students who wanted to add their own spin to the picture was to make their elements pop by using the opposite warm or cool colours. If they chose cool colours for the foreground, then I would like them to use warm colours for their accents. Where students had difficulty was when it came to the mountains further back. Some started colouring those in the same colour as the sky, rather then the same colour as the rest of the hills.

Combining Self Portraits with Book Recommendations

I'm a little art obsessed, so it's no wonder I find myself looking for the art connection to every activity or assignment I plan. I have been getting through the First 20 Days (Fountas and Pinnell), to kick off my reading program. We have been reading, and buzzing, and writing our Reader's Responses, but we're getting tired of all the 'work' involved in reading. I don't want to overwhelm my students with too many routines while they're reading that might take away from the shear enjoyment of reading, so we took a break from reading and responding. I went out and bought a bunch of pillows to comfy up the reading section, found some awesome ways to turn chairs into upside down reading benches on pinterest, and got my art on.

Snuggle Up

The mysterious upside down chair.

Shared Reading!

I noticed that my students loved to "buzz." They loved to partner read, and talk about the books they are reading. I thought, why not share this passion in the form of a book recommendation? I have actually seen classrooms write book recommendations for books in the library and attach QR codes to the backs of books that opened a book recommendation on the reader's device. Pretty cool!

We decided to combine the art of self portraits with Language Arts. Students chose a book they were reading or a favourite book, and used a book recommendation graphic organizer to organize their thinking and ensure that they included all the important details.

Then students re-wrote their recommendations in good copy form, and attached it to the back of a paper book. They added a picture to the front of the book -many forgetting which side of the book is the front -it's funny what you forget needs to be taught explicitly.

After our books were created, we needed to create self-portraits of ourselves reading. I was all ready to go, when I realized I didn't have any mirrors. How was I going to teach self-portraits without mirrors? Enter the iPads!

We took 'selfies' on the iPads, and used these pictures to help focus on different features of our faces. I loved watching my students refer to their iPad selves, pinching and zooming the photo to shrink or expand it.

The final product was a construction paper self portrait, holding a book recommendation. The resemblances were uncanny! My students are so proud of their self-portraits and are excited to read each other's favourite books!

Complementary Colours

It's been a busy September and I have been slacking in the blog department. I am going to do my best to get our classroom antics out there!

I always like to start the year off by exploring colour. In grade three we know about primary colours, so as a review, we make a poster, name them, and then create a "We All Belong" puzzle piece using inclusive words, designs of their choice, and only primary colours. It's a good inclusive piece that's easy to do during the first week of school and adds to our Promise bulletin board where we, as a class, came up with some guidelines for how we can work together as a team.  For that activity, I brainstorm 5 topics, and post them on chart paper around the room. This year our topics were:

1. What should students in our class be doing to make sure our class is a great learning community this year?

2. What do you hope to learn this year?

3. What will YOU do in order to be successful this year in grade 3?

4. Our class should be ____________________ everyday.

5. School is important because _______________________.

Then I give the students markers and sticky notes and they add their comments to the chart paper under the apporpriate headings. Once we're all done, we look at all the answers and come up with a sentence that summarizes the points that came up the most.

My second art lesson still revolves around colour. We review our primary colours again, and this time make some predicitons. What will happen when we mix one colour with the next? After we have made our predictions, we experiement. Using glass jars, water and food colouring, we mix two drops of each colour at a time into the clear jars of water. The colour change is immediate, and exciting!

I've done in between lessons here in the past with straws and paint, allowing students to use the primary colours  to mix into secondary colours by blowing the colour on to paper and having it mix and cross other colours.

Once we are confident with secondary colours, we talk about the colour wheel. We put the primary colours up, and then discuss placement of the secondary (green in between yellow and blue, orange in between red and yellow, and purple in between red and blue).

We then take a look at the wheel and make observations. Why are the colours in that order, what do you notice about the colours that our across from one another on the wheel? (They look like opposites, they are bright, they are Christmas colours -my favourite response). We talk about the position on the wheel and the opposite colour, and that these colours together cause the other to stand out. A great web resource to send this point home using real art is The Artists Toolkit. I use this site as a hook for many of my art lessons.

Once we have played around labelling complementary colours, we take a look at our assignment. Students are going to create a colour wheel using their names to show complementary colours. I have done this activity with a variety of ages, and no matter the sophistication of the student, I find explicit instruction, with steps necessary. We divided the paper into 6 equal parts using a ruler, and drew our name inside with bubble letters (drawing bubble letters was a lesson in itself. I tell them to write their names normally then trace around the lines and erase the inside). Then we decided where the colours need to go. For students who struggled with this concept, we coloured in the outside colours first, before the inside. Once they have coloured the outside colours, they use the opposite "complementary colour" on the inside. 

Side lessons on colouring are important. We talk a lot about direction, pressure and saturation to ensure we are not scribbling and leaving white spaces.

Color Matters is a great website for all ages to explain colour and design elements.