First Grade students continue learning about the Elements of Art - Line, Shape, Color, Value, Form, Texture and Space. As well as learning about the Elements of Art the students continue to use different kinds of media just like in Kindergarten except the students in First Grade get to paint a lot more. Most of the paint I use in the art room is washable but there are sometimes that the paint will stain so please do not sent the students to art in their best clothes. The First Graders also get exposed to different artists and illustrators in the art room.
The first lesson we start off with at the beginning of the year is on line. We have a review of all the different kinds of lines we learned about in Kindergarten - diagonal, vertical, horizontal, bumpy, wavy, straight, curvy, loopy, etc. The students then draw a snail on a large piece of white paper. They then use diagonal lines to make spaces on the snail's shell. Each space is filled with a different kind of line. The students then add details to the background and paint the snail using tempera paint.
The second project we work on is based on the book "Where the Wild Things Are." We talk about the different kinds of textures that the illustrator uses on the monsters in the book. We talk about visual texture - texture you can see but can't feel and tactile texture - texture you can feel. We also discuss how we would make visual texture on a piece of paper. By using different kinds of repeated lines we can draw texture on our paper. The students create monsters and add three different kinds of textures to the monsters. They then color it with crayon and paint with watercolor.
The next project the students create is based on the work of Piet Mondrian, an abstract painter. The students view some of Piet Mondrian's work and we discuss abstract art. Mondrian's later work is primarily based on five colors and simple shapes. Three of the colors he uses are the primary colors - red, blue and yellow. The students then create animals inspired by Mondrian's work. They choose an animal, draw the face and details, use a ruler to put lines on it and color in some of the squares and rectangles with the primary colors. The students then cut and glue it to a piece of black paper and add a patterned border using blue, red and yellow squares.
We then learn about the secondary colors - green, orange and purple. The students trace their hand and part of their arm on a piece of large white paper. They then use tempera paint to create three circles in the primary colors. They make the circles into flowers by using the secondary colors as petals. The final step is to add the stems and leaves so it looks like they are holding a bouquet of flowers. This project is based on the artwork "Bouquet of Peace" by Pablo Picasso.
The students then work on a collage based on the book "Snowballs" by Lois Ehlert. Lois Ehlert uses different materials in her artwork and combines them together to make a collage. The students make their own snowman collage by first painting a background piece of paper with tempera cakes. They then create three circles, small, medium and large for the snowman's body. After they create the body they move onto adding the details with things like buttons, yarn, sequins, pom-poms, rick rack, etc.
Next we move onto learning about Claude Monet. The students watch a DVD called "Linnea in Monet's Garden" about a girl named Linnea who travels to France to visit Monet's Garden, where Monet lived and worked in Giverny, France. The students learn about the painting style of Impressionism. The students then create their own version of Monet's Japanese Bridge. The students learn about Value - the lights and darks of a color. They also learn about Space - creating distance by using different sizes.