1st Grade Emotion Paintings

This was one of my student teacher's 1st grade lessons. She had the class discuss Munch's The Scream, specifically how the artist conveyed emotion. She talked about how the compositional choices contributed to the off balance/weird/maybe lonely feeling. I found a set of old photographs of kids exhibiting different emotions and she used them to help the 1st graders brainstorm different emotions. Next, the students divided their practice paper into 4 sections and drew a really small, simple face in each section to represent the emotions sad, happy, mad, and excited. (We thought those would be the 4 simplest emotions for 1st graders.) The faces helped the students remember which section was which so they could draw lines to represent each emotion. Next, they talked about how colors can show emotion. The students got their "real" piece of paper and chose an emotion to focus on. We had them draw a face to represent their chosen emotion next to their name on the back so they wouldn't forget or change their minds halfway through. With remaining time, the students used crayons to draw lines on the front to represent their emotion.

In the second class period, we sorted the students based on what emotion they wanted to paint and put them at tables with colors of tempera paint for the emotion they chose. The students created nonobjective paintings striving to convey the emotion they chose.

Mad

 Excited

 

Happy

 Sad

I almost forgot! We tried to incorporate a little Whole Brain Teaching. As the students said each part of 

"Edvard Munch", we had them place one hand on their cheek so that when the whole name was out, they were posed like the person in the Scream!

1st Grade Colorful Fish

This is my last beginning of the year fish project!  1st grade students drew a fish- I gave no instruction here except to fill the space by drawing a fish at least as big as their hand- then traced their lines with glue and sprinkled with sand.  I told the students we were adding sand to give our fish more texture.  In the second class, we reviewed color mixing and I gave each student primary and black colored tempera paint.  The students could paint their fish and backgrounds however they wanted.  I did not say that their fish had to be swimming in blue water though that is what most students chose.  After the first day, I started giving the student black paint but said it should only be used to paint over the raised sand surface and help us see the outline and details of the fish.  I've found that giving students black paint to mix colors tends to yield monochromatic paintings- usually all a nice mud color.  (By the way, if you want to see some awesome high school mud paintings, look here!)

Classes who only had one session and students who missed the first day of the project painted then added sand if there was time at the end.  My main goal for the project was to review painting and mixing colors- texture was my secondary goal.

Do your students love mixing colors as much as mine?  Green, pink, and "sky blue" seem to be their favorite colors to mix.  I love to listen to the students talk when they are mixing colors.  Even though they've done it before, it still seems like magic to them when they make a new color whether they are in 1st grade or 6th grade.  I love their excitement when they are allowed to just try new combinations and see what happens.

I think this looks like a Mondrian fish!

Check out the rest of the artwork in our Artsonia exhibit!