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This lesson was very interesting to reflect on. I did the same activity with both my fourth graders AND my kindergartners! My goal for my kindergartners was simply for them to realize that our human bodies are put together in a particular way- we have heads, torsos, and limbs. Young children often draw bodies in ways that don't make sense. Sometimes they draw big heads with tiny bodies underneath, or they draw normal-sized heads and torsos, yet scrunch the legs up to be very short. Or sometimes they even draw the arms and legs coming out of the head, skipping the torso altogether- like a Mr. Potato Head. These are all normal developmental stages that children naturally progress past. Through our practice in studying and drawing these manikins, I just wanted them to THINK about what they were drawing. I repeated the same drawing activity with fourth graders. My objective for this lesson was a bit more specific. This grade level is beginning a new IB unit centered around the concept of "Structure"- how things are put together. They'll be investigating this concept in a variety of different subject areas. Through observing and drawing these manikins, I wanted students to think about the "structure" of the human figure- how our bodies are put together. They've studied the skeletal structure of our bodies in Dance, and learned how our muscles are connected to the bones, and that moving them together is what allows us to hold ourselves up yet still flex and bend. This drawing activity is an extension of that prior learning. Much like the kindergarten students, I wanted fourth graders to draw with accuracy in representing the head, torso, and arms and legs. As these students are quite a bit older, their drawings are much more realistic and have better form. I started each fourth grade class session by showing students examples of the kindergarten drawings- I challenged them by pointing out how much detail the younger students could capture, and said that if a five-year-old can draw like this, show us what someone twice that age could do! Here are my fourth graders at work:
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Third Grade celebrated fall colors this week! We did an inquiry-based color mixing activity. I asked them to closely study a fall leaf, notice the wide variety of colors, and recreate as many as possible by mixing and blending basic colors of paint. Students were to be inquirers and find the answers to these questions: Rather than give instructions on how to make the colors, I wanted students to figure it out for themselves through experimentation. I wanted them to notice the effects of adding new colors- for example, what change would adding brown cause? What about adding brown and green together? What if I added peach or yellow next? Students were very successful in matching the colors. I was pleased with their enthusiasm and perseverance! We worked on this for the full hour, and they still weren't ready to clean up when our time was over! Some students had time to think of creative names for their color creations. They had some really fun ideas! We had a special guest on Friday! Our principal, Mrs. Humphries, was able to come in and paint with us for a while! She is a pretty talented color-namer! This project is one I keep coming back to year after year. It is so much fun for the kids, yet it has them practicing so many skills! I like to time this project with kindergarten's study of patterns, which they just finished up last week. We talk about the rainbow as a type of pattern- the colors repeat in the same order every time. Students begin their paintings with a squiggle line going all the way across their papers. Next, they'll make a matching squiggle line using the next color in the spectrum. These lines will repeat until the entire paper is filled with rainbow squiggles! The main learning objective of this project is for students to learn the correct order of the colors in the rainbow. I introduce the concept of the color wheel, and explain that it's like a round rainbow. This understanding will be important as students are later introduced to the science of color and how primary and secondary colors work. In making these paintings, students are also learning how to successfully handle a paintbrush. Their goal is to place lines of color next to one another- very close, but not touching! Painting with that amount of control takes a lot of small-muscle movements in the hand, and is a great exercise for developing fine motor skills. Students also learned important painting routines, like remembering to wash their brush before switching colors and treating the brush gently instead of scrubbing it across the paper! It was so interesting to see some students begin their paintings with a color other than red. Though red is typically the color you start with when naming the colors in order, I explain to the students that when looking at the colors in color-wheel form, it's a never-ending repeating pattern. Once you get to the last color, you are right back where you started and can just keep going! This means that no matter what color you start with, the colors before and after will always be the same. Seeing students take these different approaches is evidence that they are truly understanding the learning, instead of just copying from an example! Kindergarten students have been learning about patterns in art. We learned that patterns are made from repeating shapes, and that they are often found in nature but can be man-made too. To start off this unit, we looked at the book Spotty, Stripy, Swirly: What Are Patterns? Students' next task was to find images of patterns in magazines. I told them they were going on a "pattern hunt" to cut out as many examples of patterns as they could find. This was our first time using scissors this year, so it was a chance for me to assess each students' experience with cutting and to encourage proper grip of the scissors. The next day of the lesson involved students recreating a pattern out of paper. Students chose a black-and-white version of a simple pattern and then had to cut out those shapes and arrange them on a background. Each student had to interpret their pattern for themselves instead of copying an example, so this was a pretty challenging project. It was a lot to expect of kindergarten students after only a few weeks of school! I was so pleased and surprised with how well most students accomplished the task! Today was the first time I tried this activity with kids, and I loved it! It is great for building fine motor skills and encouraging muscle development.
Each student arranged foam blocks on a large piece of paper. They used markers to draw around these obstacles, not ever letting their marker touch them. By doing this, students are forced to use big arm movements, instead of just moving the wrist and fingers as required by most writing and drawing. This type of whole-body movement is an important skill for artists to have, and will be helpful in the activity we'll do next week which explores expressive mark-making! Students stood up to draw today, which helps to encourage the use of larger muscle groups. They drew repeated paths around the obstacles, moving in whichever direction felt natural. After a few minutes, we switched it up-- I told students to draw backwards, and try to retrace their paths in the opposite direction. Then, to increase the challenge even more, I had students switch to drawing with their non-dominant hand! This was a fun activity, with lots of skill-building, and definitely one I'll use again! This lesson is the start of a three-week long unit inspired by plants. First graders are currently studying plants in their science curriculum, so these art projects are designed to complement that.
The goal of this week's activity was to encourage students to observe details in each leaf and be able to recreate them. Students will need this skill in a couple of weeks when we do detailed "scientific illustrations" of plants. Each student chose a half of a leaf and then created the other half. Ideally we would have used real leaves, but it's too early in the spring for trees to have leaves yet. So we used these photos from the internet instead. Today's activity was one that is incredibly fun and memorable for kids, but also an excellent learning experience! Students used playdough to create figures. I gave them a template with an outline of a figure and their task was to create the person out of playdough. (Of course, remembering to include all the details we've been practicing!)
We actually completed this project before Christmas, but I didn't have a chance to post any finished work. This lesson coincided with kindergarten's study of communities. In Art, their task was to create a collage of a community building. This activity was full of great skill-building practice, like cutting, gluing, and using lots of details!
I love this activity for kindergartners because it's excellent for developing fine motor skills. Students first make a squiggly line that twists all over their entire paper- this is great for teaching big movements, and drawing with your whole arm, not just the hand. Then, students use paint to trace back over that line- this is much harder for them! Any kind of tracing practice is a great skill-builder. It's wonderful for strengthening all the little muscles in the hand, which means students have better control over their drawing materials. (And better handwriting!) Here's one of the finished paintings... they are beautiful! Second grade's next major project will be family portraits, which we'll start in a couple of weeks. To prepare, students have been practicing drawing faces! Each student had a dry-erase face template and I encouraged them to try LOTS of different kinds of faces.
Our focus for this activity was on drawing from observation- drawing how things really look, instead of how we think they look. Students had mirrors to observe their own faces, as well as sample drawings to learn from. |
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