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!

Military Assembly and Artwork

My schools are close to a military base so we have lots of military families. Just at my K-3rd school, we have 29 students and 7 staff members with immediate families in the military. Last week we had a big assembly to thank those families for their sacrifices. Families, our superintendent, board members, and the Adjutant General of Kansas were in attendance. The students came into the gym silently then sang patriotic songs and wove flags as the families entered. My principal and the Adjutant General spoke, the families were introduced and applauded, we showed a slideshow with pictures of the servicemen and women and their families, there was more singing, and then the highlight of the morning was one of my Kindergarteners getting the best surprise Christmas present ever when his dad got home from a deployment in Kuwait.

I wanted some 1 day lesson plans for the week of Thanksgiving and I wanted to contribute to the military assembly somehow, so I came up with some patriotic Art projects to do with 1st-3rd grade.  2nd and 3rd grade students made abstract drawings on 4 inch square paper using red and blue markers. We talked about color symbolism and how we could use elements from the American flag but change them to make new designs. I used the drawings as a border for the giant bulletin board outside my room (that I apparently didn't photograph). They frame a sign painted on butcher paper that says "Thank You, Military Families!"

My 1st grade students made artwork to "Give our troops a hand". While the students wrote names on their light blue construction paper, I called one group at a time over to my table. I let the students choose either red, white, or blue paint. I rolled the paint on one of their hands, gave them a paper towel to squeeze with the painted hand, and sent them straight to the classroom bathroom to wash up. When their hands were clean, red, white, and blue oil pastels were used to add lines and shapes.

The Color Of

Have you heard of "The Color Of" yet?  I just saw it yesterday on Twitter and I have been having fun trying it out.  From their website,

This is a system created to find out the colour of anything, by querying and aggregating image data from Flickr, a popular online photo sharing community. It is an attempt at answering a potentially complex and abstract question in an objective manner, by using simple algorithms on data originating from subjective human perceptions.

THE COLOR OF uses an averaging algorithm on the colour pixel values of the queried images, displaying the result incrementally as each picture is loaded. Taking the assumption that random images will average out to become grey, we can attribute any colour bias which deviates from grey, to the term as searched. Any further interpretation is then up to the user.

So basically, you can search for just about anything and it shows you what "color" the term is as a result of compiling lots of images.  I think it's pretty interesting and fun!  I also think it has some possibilities in the classroom.

You could use it as a starting point for color symbolism...

It's fun to search for artists, movements, and even specific works of Art...

Or even sounds!

I see a lesson plan inspired by this in my students' future!