Saturday, July 12, 2014

AWESOME Artwork

In the last month of school, I showed my 1st graders the artwork of Dallas Clayton and talked about his book, "An Awesome Book". I love Dallas Clayton's artwork and writing because it's super positive and often about dreams and imagination. He also just seems like a pretty cool guy! An Awesome Book was written for his son and when I used his book as inspiration for a "Positivity Monster" project a couple years ago, he turned around and was inspired by one of my students to write a new poem "I Love You I'm a Sea Monster". 
Most of the students chose to make positivity monsters so I'm sure that it would be a hit as a "have to" project as well. I just asked the students to make up an imaginary creature, maybe a combination of other animals if they needed a starting point, and then if they chose to, add a positive phrase that would make the reader feel happy.
In addition to imagination practice, I used this time to demonstrate wet on wet watercolor techniques. 
The first time I taught this lesson was toward the beginning of the school year. What a difference a year makes in 1st grade writing abilities!
 A bonus mini lesson came up when students kept asking about writing bubble letters. Turning a line into a shape was a fun challenge.
I ended up holding on to several of the paintings that I'm planning to use in my back to school bulletin board. I think it will say "Have an AWESOME year!" or something like that.
 
I hope this artwork made you happy. Remember, You are Awesome!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing this! I am totally lifting it for a back to school bulletin board created by the students. I have not seen this book so I look forward to reading it and sharing it with my students. We ended the year with a "You Are Beautiful" mural in the cafeteria so this will be a great extension of our positive thoughts mission.

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