1st Grade Wild Things + Artist Statements

Way back in October, a couple of my 1st grade classes made "Wild Things" inspired by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. We brainstormed things that he included in his illustrations to make the "things" look wild. The students used the list (horns, fur, claws, scales, feathers, beaks, etc.) to get ideas for their drawings. They drew in sharpie first then used construction paper and regular crayons to add color. The best part, for me, was reading the artist statements I asked them to write on the back. Since it was their first attempt at writing about their artwork, I just asked them to tell me something about their wild things.  I added them into our Artsonia gallery with a little note that I typed the words as they were written by the students and I was sure that their parents had already noticed an improvement in their spelling and writing skills.

Andruw4 says this about his/her art... My mostr is nice.

	Crystal1058 says this about his/her art... My mostor is osm. It is sckere. My mostr is fune.
	Gabriel1830 says this about his/her art... My monstr is sckere. I love my mostr.		Skylar1032 says this about his/her art... My mosr [monster] is men. He has big feet.

	Annika300 says this about his/her art... My wild thing is a scare animal. It has a spice [spikey] mowth. It has spice feet.		Tonya70 says this about his/her art... This is my mostr. I hav put bune irs and I hav put a orch srt on him and I put to trezz. [This is my monster. I have put bunny ears and I have put an orange shirt on him and I put two trees.)
	Joelle119 says this about his/her art... I love my wild thing. I love it.		Ethan5046 says this about his/her art... I love my picture very much. I worked hard and did a good job.
	Lillie127 says this about his/her art... I lick my goiing [drawing] cas [because] it was funing [funny.] I lick my funing wilyd thing.		Peyton1320 says this about his/her art... I liook Art.
	Taylor10174 says this about his/her art... I love my wiyld rck.		Brooke3418 says this about his/her art... I love mi proijekt becozz it was dark! I made a wild thing.
	Cade695 says this about his/her art... I like my wild thing be cos it is funny.		Isaac2017 says this about his/her art... I lick [like] it bucus it wus fun. I lick it. A fun crech [creature].
	Cheyenne1867 says this about his/her art... my monstr is funny. My monstr likes to draw.		Zoie132 says this about his/her art... My monstr is funny and skarey and nice. It likes to drowl [draw]. It is going to be vere skary varey son [soon] wan I tech it to be skary.
	Matthew10750 says this about his/her art... It is sogoun. He is so big. He is siney. It wuzz at nite. Me and him had so mut fun. Wuw! I love him! Bi!		Samantha8066 says this about his/her art... It's in the forist. It's cool. It's has a good singing. This is wan.
	Travis1966 says this about his/her art... The monster yelled at Travis. I like to draw and color the picture.		Sadee8 says this about his/her art... I love my wild picture. I really love it. Boo!

I am Wild When I...

Before the movie Where the Wild Things Are came out a couple years ago, there was a really awesome blog for it (We Love You So). They posted things about the movie, Maurice Sendak's book, and just cool artwork. One thing I remember seeing, though there is too much information for me to locate the exact link now, was a kids' activity where they were asked to finish the sentence "I am wild when I ______." I wanted to do some WTWTA art projects back in October and didn't want to stick with just drawing wild things (though we did that too, in 1st grade). I printed off sheets with the beginning of the sentence and space for the students to dictate their writing to me. I read the book to them and we talked about the story, especially the parts where Max was acting wild. I asked them to think of when they are wild like having fun, not wild like going to hurt someone. The students drew an illustration for their sentence and I wrote it for them in sharpie. If I were doing this with older kids, I would have asked them to write their own sentence. Since some of the Kinders are still learning to recognize letters, I figured there was nothing wrong with me printing it for them. This project was easily done in one class period. I loved the different answers the students came up with. Some tried to tell me exactly the same thing as a student they were sitting by but it didn't take too much prompting for them to think of something else to say.

"I am a triangle"- what a silly little boy, he is a Pre-K student that comes to Art with a Kindergarten class.

This little guy was definitely inspired by the book!