Piet Mondrian Collages: Kinder

All grades have been learning about the famous artist Piet Mondrian to reinforce the concepts of lines, geometric shapes, primary colors, and to incorporate art history. As a part of their study, Kindergarten created two different Mondrian inspired collages. The first collage was to glue white strips of paper vertically and horizontally on black paper. They then glued primary colored squares and square rectangles on the white strips. On the second collage, they glued black strips of paper on narrow white paper. They then glued primary colored squares and rectangles of larger sizes in the white spaces. Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow was the inspiration for these pieces.

Trees in Moonlight: Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade students practiced creating tints and shades by adding white or black to blue tempera paint. Starting with the tint, they painted a full moon on construction paper. They then used the blue hue to paint a ring around it. They then used the shade to paint the rest of the paper in a circular shape. In the pictures, they outside looks more black than it really is. After painting, they cut out a tree on black paper and glued it to their moon background to create positive and negative space.

Dinosaurs: Third Grade

Third Grade performed "Dinostars" for the monthly PTA program. To go along with their program, they created dinosaur art. They first painted the sky background using orange, yellow, and purple. They then added a dinosaur in black construction  paper to the sky background to create positive and negative space.

Cool Color Birds: Second Grade

Second Grade students created a sky background with grass by painting only with cool colors. With the help of tracers, they cut out various sized and shaped black birds. They also cut strips of black paper to represent grass. They glued their birds and grass to the sky and grass background to create positive and negative space silhouettes.

Second and Third Grade Murals

On Fridays, we have "Collaborative Art Fridays." Monday through Thursday, I teach the main focus lesson and the students create artwork individually. Each group will visit art on average about one Friday per month according to our rotation schedule. So, on these days, the students work on a collaborative project that incorporates the art elements we have been working on during that month. For this lesson, the students worked to trace various geometric shapes on white bulletin board paper. They then connected the shapes to one another and the edges of the paper with various lines to create organic shapes. They then painted in the shapes. As they worked, we talked about balance and the need to space the colors out in work like this. These really add a pop of color to our neutral back hallway!

Fourth and Fifth Grade Murals

On Fridays, we have "Collaborative Art Fridays." Monday through Thursday, I teach the main focus lesson and the students create artwork individually. Each group will visit art on average about one Friday per month according to our rotation schedule. So, on these days, the students work on a collaborative project that incorporates the art elements we have been working on during that month. For this lesson, the students crumpled pieces of white bulletin board paper into a ball. They then worked to trace all of the wrinkles, or lines, with black Sharpie Markers. They then painted in the organic shapes created by the lines with Tempera Paint. I love how these turned out!

Warm and Cool Waves: Fifth Grade

Fifth Grade demonstrated their knowledge of warm and cool colors by creating wave patterns. They first used a ruler to create a grid. They then drew waves on top of the grid. As they did this, we reviewed the differences between geometric and organic shapes. The students traced their lines in black marker. They then colored the grid in a warm color pattern. They then colored the waves in a cool color pattern.

Beauty Is In The Eye of the Beholder: Fifth Grade

In Fifth Grade we talked about the importance of art critiques but that ultimately, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We discussed what this saying meant. The students then drew the outline of an eye and then traced bowls to create pupils. They then divided the pupil into six parts. They traced all of their drawing with a black Cray-pas. They then colored in the pupil to look like a basic color wheel with the Cray-pas. They then drew details like eye lashes and eyebrows.

Zentangle Color Wheels: Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade learned about the art of Zentangles. Using various handouts as inspirations and their own knowledge of lines, the students drew various Zentangle creations into sections of a color wheel they drew with rulers. They traced their lines with markers and colored in the color wheel sections with crayons.

Cool and Warm Hands: Third Grade

Third Grade students created patterns with geometric shapes and cool/warm colors. To integrate math, students had to find either a square or circle that covered the most area. They traced that shape and then found the same shape but with less area. They traced the shape and then repeated this step until they got to the shape that covered the least area. Once their shapes were traced, they traced their handprint in the middle. They then colored the geometric shapes in a pattern of either warm or cool colors. They colored the handprint in the opposite set of colors. For display, I grouped them into warm and cool colors.

Raining Colors: Second Grade

With the aid of rulers, second grade drew a top view of umbrellas divided into six sections. They colored each section in order of the color wheel. They then drew basic geometric shapes under the umbrella to form a raincoat and boots. They also drew organic shapes of raindrops and a puddle.

Cool and Warm Birds: First Grade

First Grade drew birds using basic 2D shapes. They drew their birds sitting on straight lines like wires. For each bird, we talked about how you can change the way the birds look by moving just the position of their beaks and eyes. Some birds were drawn looking up, some were drawn looking to the side, and some were drawn looking straight forward. After tracing their drawings in black, the students painted one row in cool colors and one row in warm colors using liquid water colors.

A Rainbow of Friends: First Grade

First Grade read A Rainbow of Friends by P.K. Hallinan as a connection to creating our class Social Contract and as an introduction to the color wheel, primary colors, and secondary colors. Each student used various shaped foam stamps to paint shapes in color wheel order. The next week, once the paint was dry, they used multicultural markers to add heads, arms, and legs to the shapes. They then added basic facial features, hair, and shoes to match the shapes.

Mouse Paint: Kindergarten

Kindergarten read Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh to learn about primary colors and the secondary colors created by mixing those colors. After reading the book, the students used mouse shaped tracers to draw six mice in a circular shape. They then traced the mice in black markers. They then added eyes and tails with spiral lines. Next the students painted in each mouse in color wheel order with liquid water colors.

Environmental Print Color Wheels: Kinder

Kinder students worked together to create basic color wheels with magazine pictures and words. They sorted the clippings by color and practiced using glue sticks to attach them to paper plates.

Lines That Move: Fifth Grade

Fifth Grade created moving lines using just paper, markers, scissors, and glue. They first drew curved lines in complementary color patterns from two opposite corners. Then, on the back side, they used rulers to measure equal strips of straight lines. They cut the lines apart and then arranged them on black construction paper in a wave. To create the wave, they fanned out the first half of the strips going in one direction and the second half of the strips fanned out in the opposite direction.

Fourth Grade Foil Lines

Fourth Grade students used various art materials to create their low-relief line art. They started with a piece of cardboard and cut slits into the edges. They then weaved yarn through the slits and across the cardboard creating various diagonal lines. They then wrapped the cardboard in foil and smoothed it out over the yarn causing areas of low-relief. They then colored in the low-relief areas with Sharpie Markers. Thank you to PTA for buying these materials for us!