Positive Negative Notan

In this lesson I had the kids experimenting with positive and negative shapes. In Japan this is called Notan, and you typically start with single square of black paper. Every shape that you cut out, you flip and mirror it outwards, so it can get quite complicated. It teaches the kids about shape, as well as positive and negative shapes.

To check out all the art photos click here. 

For the K-1 kids, I did  similar but different project that involved them making single cuts across a paper in a variety of shapes and then gluing them down with some negative space between them.

America the Beautiful

 This year, we are having a school-wide focus on North America, and American history in several grades. In music, the kids were learning 'America the Beautiful,' so I decided to do something that tied into the song in art class.

To check out all the art photos click here. 

The K-1 class did one picture that was their choice of imagery from the first two stanzas...all the most common phrases:

O beautiful for spacious skies, 

For amber waves of grain, 

For purple mountain majesties 

Above the fruited plain! 

America! America! 

God shed his grace on thee 

And crown thy good with brotherhood 

From sea to shining sea! 

I showed the kids some imagery from a book that had some wonderful illustrations, and we discussed spacious, amber, grain, etc.  The technique we used was torn paper. I do this so they don't get to worked up about drawing or cutting exact shapes. 

My educational goals in this lesson were to teach the kids to use color, shape and texture. Tearing (with some cutting) is a good way to get some interesting shapes. Then the kids were to think about their arrangement before gluing and try to use layering with background and foreground objects to create depth. They did a good jobs for kids this young!

Greek vases 2013

Another project that I did two years ago, this dovetails with the 5th-6th study of ancient Greece. The kids viewed some examples of the shapes and decorations of greek vases. Then they folded the orange paper in half and drew half the vase. I did not limit their shapes but did want them to put handles and base and top on it. Then they decorated with black marker to simulate repeating design and athletic figures.

Tangrams

This was a fun project that our other teachers did with the kids on a "Fun Friday." The results were too cute and artistic to not post here as well. Lots of fun combos of triangles!

Kinder Bees

Being that its springtime now, and the kids have been learning about insects, I had the idea to do bees with the little kids.

This was a fun multi-step project that turned out great. I did explain a bit about the parts of a bee, and they used paper, paint, and some foam packing material for the wings.

 I'm always amazed at how much personality the kids can put into their art. It is always much more charming and evocative than the sample I show them!

Self portrait in paper: an old standby

At the risk of being repetitive, I did a lesson this week that is an old standby of mine. The reason I did it was that is such a great window into the soul of these kids! A simple self portrait is transformed by how they cut, tear and glue some pretty simple ingredients!  It is amazing how much personality comes thru when you see these!

Halloween pumpkins

For the younger kids, I did a Halloween project that got great results a few years back: Positive / negative pumpkins with orange and black paper.

The key is having the kids learn that they can just draw half the jack-o-lantern on one piece and cut it out and then reverse it onto the other paper.

Quite a concept for the Kinders!  But they had much more fun results than I imagined. Very cool stuff!

The Kindergarteners:

The 1st-4th graders

Kindergarten owls

In a repeat of a fun project from the past, we did Owls in the Kindergarten class. They were a hoot!

I do a directed drawing with the kids and then have them tear and cut paper to decorate their owls. It always amazes me how much personality comes out in these simple projects.

Self portraits with paper

The luxury of having a new batch of kindergarteners who have not taken art from me before, is that I get to revisit "ye olde arte projects of the past." Having taught for three years now, I have quite a few that I would repeat and this is one of them!

Here is a link to the project from 2 years ago!

No matter how simple or complex, it is amazing how distinctive and representative some simple cut and torn pieces of construction paper can be. Even Kinders can make their self portrait portray themselves.

I have the kids pick background color and then some skin and hair color. They cut the face as a circle (or close) and then they can tear bits for hair. Add some eyes, nice mouth etc...