How Many Art Mediums in One Long Blog Post

Loving that he used his words to make a bird foot.

Today we finished up an art project that incorporated cutting/gluing construction paper, water color drawings, tempera painting, and poetry. My chickadees were so proud of themselves, they really didn't want me to hang them up at school, they just wanted to take them home.


We started with the Darting Bird quilt block.  Read here for more directions.




The Watercolor Square:
We started out at How To Draw..., looking at step by step directions for how to draw birds and practiced on scrap paper.  Then we looked at books for appropriate colors and details.  We drew a rough draft sketch with pencil.  And then got a piece of water color paper and drew our bird again.  After our pencil sketch, we traced our lines with "thin" sharpies.  And finally began water coloring.  I am so thoroughly amazed with their art.  Water Color paper might be magical, kids who normally speed through all things truly took their time and oh my word was I blown away by their drawings!

Then add a solid water color background.  We also tried to label our bird and use our initials, like John James Audobon, in The Boy Who Drew Birds.  (Unlike him, we did NOT through our work in the fire.)

 The Poetry Square:
Have you seen this book?  We were inspired by this page, "If birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew, think what the sky would look like."  So we found some feathers in the back of the arts cupboard and dipped them into paint. 

Then we wrote a simple poem:  Birds ________, Birds ___________, Birds ___________ Birds!  (thank you Writing Fix for the poetry idea.) The blanks had to be filled with a verb ending in -ing.  And the poem had to written like a bird carrying words through the air.

Birds flying birds fluttering birds hunting Birds!

The only thing I wish is that I would have left a border in between and around the squares....until next year.

Happy Wednesday,
 

Delightful Dandelions

Poetry and art are such good friends.  We are worked a bit on some poetry writing for poetry month.   Two different blogs were inspiration for this cuteness!  Check them out...First Grade Wow and That Artist Woman 
The Poem:  We simply made a list of things we wished for.  We wrote a rough draft and then copied our final draft with Sharpie.  (The cute form we used is at First Grade Wow)
 




The Silhouettes:  I took a picture of each student and had a parent cut out their picture.  Then I gave each student their picture and they traced it onto black paper.  After tracing they cut out their silhouette and added yellow paper to make them stand out.  

The Background we used water color and washed large chunks of color onto blank paper.  










The Dandelions:  We went on a stick search for the perfect stem.  Yarn became the tops.  One of my favorite teaching strategies for helping kids work together is to do an activity (make the dandelions) with about six students.  So I showed them how to wrap the yarn around their fingers, and then cut the loops to make  the pieces the same length.  The group assembled everything on the page where they wanted it and then glued it down.  Once we finish that first group of six, got a friend and taught them the process, while I meet with individual students for editing their poems.

Here are some of the final products.

Happy Monday,