3rd Grade Fall Project- Warm Weaving/Cool Leaf Printing

It took me so long to get all my fall lessons photographed last year that I just decide to save them up to post closer to the correct season. It's still technically summer while I'm typing this, but

1. I start back to school in 2 days.
2. The drought is making the leaves turn brown and fall to the ground so it looks a little bit like fall today.
3. I'm already thinking about lessons for the fall semester and you might be, too!

Back in my very first year of teaching (3 whole years ago seems like a long time now) I had planned a very similar lesson for 2nd grade but it took so long to weave, and I had a disastrous experience trying to print leaves with another grade, that it just stayed a weaving. I decided to be brave and try it with 3rd grade last year. We reviewed warm and cool colors (I tend to incorporate a lot of color theory) and the students identified warm colors as "fall colors". I explained that the students would be weaving using warm colored construction paper then printing leaves on top using cool colors. All except for a couple new students had learned to weave in Art class the year before so they didn't need much review aside from how to hold the folded paper to cut the warp and I had my early finishers help students who were struggling. I'm pretty sure we did this in one class period since I let the students choose from 6x9 inch construction paper instead of a full 9x12 inch sheet. After the strips were woven as tightly as we could get them, students with extra time added glue to the loose ends for extra security.

After the weaving was complete, I passed out trays to each table with green, blue, and purple tempera paint and 2 brushes for each color. We didn't want to make a mess on the tables, so I passed out some odd sized paper scraps for the students to brush on top of. It didn't take long for us to realize that the negative space of the leaf had possibility so we reviewed positive and negative space and turned this into a 2 part project! The students tried to make a nice composition with their overlapping negative space leaves as well as printing on their weavings.

Another Jim Dine post

Source: artnet.com via Katie on Pinterest

I wanted to do a Jim Dine-inspired lesson with Kindergarten to help them get [even more] excited for Hoops for Heart and at first, I planned to do something similar to the lesson I tried out last year. The students noticed the texture in the background of some of Dine's heart paintings, "scribbled" with cool colors on cool colored paper, learned to make a symmetrical heart by cutting folded paper, then used the cut out as a stencil to brush a red heart over the background.

Last year's Dine project

Then I saw a post from Rust and Sunshine about making heart stamps out of cardboard tubes, and since I knew the students would have so much fun with it, I tweaked my plan.  http://rustsunshine.blogspot.com/2012/01/heart-stamps.html

This was completed in one, 40-minute class period. First we looked at and discussed Dine's painting shown at the top of this post. I asked the students to just look and think for a minute, without saying anything before talking. Then I asked "What do you see?" and the students raised their hands to name things. The first thing mentioned was, of course, "hearts". I was trying to get them to say the word "shape" when I asked "what are hearts?" and "what do hearts have in common with circles, squares, ellipses, triangles, and rectangles?" I finally gave up after I got answers of "square!" and "circle!" and told them that they are all shapes! We took a minute to discuss if the hearts on the projector screen look like the real hearts in our bodies (the students were split on this but I convinced them they are a little different) and what we can do to have healthy hearts.

Then the students pointed out the different colors and we talked about how some of the sections looks like they have texture. After demonstrating some crayon techniques to achieve different textures, the students used crayons to fill in their 8x10 inch paper with colors and textures. When they were done with the background, I showed them how to use the cardboard tubes turned heart stamps by gently pressing them into the paint and then stamping on their paper. I made about 30 stamps and that was enough to get through my 6 Kindergarten classes. Some stamps were in pretty bad shape by the end from students banging them onto their papers, but the other end of the stamp was usually usable.

*If you make cardboard heart stamps, definitely use a good piece of tape to make the folded tubes hold their shape, like is suggested at Rust and Sunshine where the idea came from.

What Would You Do...

...with this idea?
Idea: Printing heart shaped leaves and then __________.

Whenever I do a project with students using real leaves, (Yes, students, REAL leaves) the kids get so excited about redbud leaves since they are heart shaped. I wanted to do a quick, easy project with Kindergarten that involved printing the heart shaped leaves.

Because leaves are cool, printing is fun, and kids love hearts.

The pictures here are just little 5 minute experiments. I set up a different station at each table one day in October and sat at one of the tables to help students print their leaves. I gave them a quick demo then let them print their leaves and add lines and shapes with crayons. Oh, I waited too long and the redbud leaves were shot but then I noticed I could substitute morning glory leaves which are also heart shaped. The yellow paper is just because I happened to have extra yellow construction paper cut down. I think just using different colors would make this cooler. Maybe a Jim Dine meets Andy Goldsworthy idea? Or Andy Warhol for that matter...

Source: artnet.com via Katie on Pinterest

I thought I would try posing the question/problem to our little Art Teacher blogging community to see if anybody has a brilliant idea! I don't necessarily want this to be a "Fall" project, just something inspired by the shape... If you have a cool idea, please share! I want to collect lots and lots of ideas to add to the others I've come up with. I can try them out when the leaves are back and post the results.

Klee-Inspired Geometric Shape Fish

My K-3rd grade school started off the year with a "Fish" theme.  The Kindergarten teachers suggested it last spring and we all just kind of went with it!  I planned a fish project for each grade.  Up first is 2nd grade, just because I finished editing their photos first!  Check out the Artsonia exhibit here, and please don't judge me for the colors being really funky, I am finding that editing with Artsonia's website is time saving since I can do it at school but not the most true to life when Auto correct and Brighten are the only ways to adjust color.  But enough about that, read on for my jabbering about the project.

  Paul Klee is an artist that I honestly didn't know very much about before starting this project.  I knew the name and knew that shapes and abstraction were involved in his work but besides seeing some lesson plans based on him, I never gave him very much thought.  I got ahold of some Art for Children books that the library was discarding and one of them was about Paul Klee.  I looked through it and mentally filed away a few ideas.  For the fish project, I showed the students three of his paintings.  

We started by looking at Klee's painting, Castle and Sun, and discussing the shapes which the students were able to identify as geometric.  (I always remind them that geometric shapes are the kind they learn about in Math class and that seems to help them remember.) I explained that they would eventually be making pictures of fish so with that in mind, the background was going to be made of squares and rectangles printed in cool colors to remind us of water.  I used my handy dandy box cutter to cut squares and rectangles out of cardboard.  I didn't worry about using a straight edge or measuring, I wanted a little variety.  The students painted tints of purple, blue, and green on the cardboard and then stamped the shape on their paper, black construction paper.  I think the added white helped the paint show up better.  The little art history lesson, introduction, and printing took the first 40-minute class period.

The best way I found to handle the paint was to put a little tray of each color at each table.  I put it on top of this weird vinyl-y stuff that I have packs and packs of.  It made a pretty good placemat and contained most of the mess.  My tables usually have about 5 students at them so I put two brushes in each paint color.  I asked the students to keep the brushes with one color so I didn't have to worry about water.  The cardboard pieces just stayed on the vinyl stuff when not in use.

During the second class, we looked at two more Klee paintings: Fish Magic and The Golden Fish.  We saw how Paul Klee used geometric shapes to construct his fish.  I actually used a Pinterest board I created about Paul Klee as a way to organize the images I wanted to show the students.  It worked really well.  I just pulled up the board at the beginning of class and it kept track of the "bookmarks" for me.  (The Philadelphia Museum of Art's website was really great because it lets you zoom in to focus on details of the paintings.)  Next, we brainstormed some different geometric shapes and I was going to draw them on the chalkboard for reference when I remembered I didn't have to!  Instead, I projected a poster that I had saved on, you guessed it, Pinterest, and the students could just look at it for ideas!

Source: awesomeartists.com via Katie on Pinterest

Afterwards, each student was given a quarter page black construction paper and asked to draw a fish as big as they could fit on on the page made out of geometric shapes.  Of course I had lots of students tell me they didn't know how so I just reminded them that they were imaginary fish and they could keep it simple like an ellipse and a triangle.  The "I can't"s and "I don't know how"s seem to be a lot worse at the beginning of the school year...

After they finished drawing in pencil, construction paper crayons were used to fill in the shapes then the fish were cut out and glued down on the printed papers.  There ended up being a little extra time in most classes so I let them have the "bonus step" of adding some sand (yes, REAL SAND) to their artwork.  They get so darn excited about sand... and I do a little, too!  Calling it a "bonus step" seemed to be really motivating.

My schedule can end up being a big mess if I don't change some lessons for classes on certain days.  My Tuesday classes hardly ever miss but days off school tend to be scheduled on Mondays and Fridays.  Labor day was obviously on a Monday so my Monday classes had 1 1/2 class periods instead of 2.  They drew their fish at the end of the first day and colored and printed on the second day.  There was no cutting involved.  Here is a result from one of those classes:

1st Grade Circle Prints

 This idea was inspired by the circle printing lesson on Art is the Best Part of the Day.  This was a two class period project.  On the first day, we reviewed organic and geometric shapes (that seems to be my "thing" this year) and talked about how overlapping creates new shapes.  We used styrofoam cups like I saw on Art is the Best Part of the Day but we also added cardboard tubes for variety in size paint.  I put black tempera paint out in little trays and showed the students how to stick the cups and tubes in the paint, then print on their papers.  I asked the students to have overlapping and to fill the space.  

On day 2, I showed the students how to find the new shapes that were created by overlapping and asked them to not have two shapes of the same color that touched.  I also reminded them to trace the outline of the shape with crayon first before carefully coloring the inside.

Some students got a little carried away with printing and had LOTS of little shapes to try to color in.  I encouraged the students to take their time and think about where they were putting each circle but some just couldn't resist! :)

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