Apple Stamping

 
Ah, the smell of apples in September and the pitter-patter of Kindergartners! A fall classic is apple stamping, but I gave it a bit of a twist this year by having them assemble it into a tree. My K-1 class only has 30 minutes and this was a non-stop lesson with three different paint stations, three different parts and three colors that had to rotate 12 kids through.

To check out all the art photos click here. 



I cut apples in half and then collected leaves (I used cherry leaves since apple leaves are not very flat)

The apple station was red, leaf station green and the bark station was paper bags that they used brushes to explore texture on. The kids really got into the stamping and art really feels like art when they a re slopping the paint around! Its amazing to see the reactions to the young kids exploring texture and printing.

In the next lesson, after paint had dried, we cut out the apples, leaves and the trunks were cut from tracings of their arm and hand.

Asian Plum Blossoms

For the Springtime and as study of Asian painting, I had the younger kids do a study of the plum blossoms, with black paint branches, pink tissue paper and green "celadon" paper vases.

Celtic Crosses 2013

In a repeat of a project I did 2 years ago, I had the K-1 group make crosses for St. Patrick's Day. Tinfoil, pencils to emboss with, paint and some construction paper. The main concepts are pattern, and how to use paint to "antique" the metal. Fun and simple.

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!

Color Value landscapes

This project turned out better than I hoped. A few weeks ago, I had the kids paint 4 sheets of paper with dark-light versions of a color. Most people chose purple, blue or green. Those had to dry, so we picked it up a couple weeks later.

This lesson involved both color value and the idea of perspective and how distant objects are usually less complex looking and lighter. The kids had to layer their painted papers from light at the top to dark at the bottom. The way they chose to cut and overlap also had to attempt to get sharper and more complex shapes in the foreground and softer shapes in the background.

Back to School Apples

Being that we live in the heart of apple country—and to be more exact—Gravenstein Apple country, I often have the kids do something related to apples in September. For the K-1 class, I brought in a Gravenstein apple for each kid and had them truly look at it. Its yellow with red and green stripes and spots. Not just an ordinary red apple. I wanted them to realize that art involves truly looking at an object and not just assuming what it looks like.

We used paper plates as the medium (I do this a lot!): they cut a "bite" or two out and then used that chunk as the leaf, and the bit of rim as the stem. These apples are "green" eventhough they are yellow!

Week 1: Apple Printing

Its apple season and I'm getting the Kindergarteners into the swing of things.  This week I used paint and cut apples to make some simple stamps.  Pretty basic items, but the kids really got into it. One of the girls even went home and showed her Mom how to do it!

Week 14: Pointilism

Back to the late 19th Century we went with a lesson on Pointilism...Suerat and Signac namely. I showed the kids examples of this French Impressionist approach, emphasizing atmosphere, color mixing and lots and lots of little brush strokes!

I had the kids create their own with q-tips and watercolor. This minimized the inherent want to swipe the brush and gave them a fun new utensil to try.  While it seemed a bit exhaustive for some, most really embraced the limitation and did a great job.

Week 11: Plastic painted ornaments

With the gracious help of another mother, Mary Maxwell, we did some special ornaments.  She had a supplie of clamshell type clear palstic ornaments. They were balls and stars.  We had the kids put a few quirts of acrylic paint into the inside of the clear ornaments. (the less, the better) Then they close the ornment snuggly! and shake it around. The result is a marbled look inside.

The only problem is that if the kids use too much paint, it puddles in the bottom and does not dry.  Otherwise the kids had a blast. Thanks Mary!

Week 24 & 25: Eric Carle Butterflies

It feels like its been a while since I posted, and that's because we did a 2-week project that was inspired by Eric Carle, the famous children's book author/illustrator of many beooks including the "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"




Week 1 involved making the paper to collage the next week. Carle used colored tissue paper to paint, but I had the kids work with large sheets of white construction paper.  They were given just the primary colors and told to mix and play with it on the paper and not in their pallete.  They also had toothbrushes for stippling and spatterings and forks for scraping. No rules, except that if they wanted more than one color to collage they needed to be mindful of making areas of distinct color combos and not overmixing to mud.  They achieved some very rich layered looks!

Week 2,  I gave each student their dried paper back and showed them samples of Carle's work again and then some simple digrams of how to make butterflies, bees and dragonflies from mostly just circles.



Some kids made big bold insects and many made flowers, while some made tiny little insects that seems to be swallowed by the page.  Most had little trouble figuring out what to do.



This turned out to be one of the best projects of the year. The color play with paint during the first step was very abstract and sensual, while they had to do some planning for their collage in step two. During the collage faze, they had to work with abstract shapes to make specific objects and also plan color, shape and size.  The end results are amazingly professional looking and really adhere to the spirit of Eric Carle. Good job kids!