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Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Printmaking With a Twist

So excited about a lesson that I road-tested with my daughter and neighbor today. It's a twist on an old favorite. I'm thinking of this for 3rd grade. Instead of printing the same image they will modify the plate each time, adding a snowflake.











Could extend the lesson an additional week by collaging curtains or painting the back of a head as a silhouette (or just for early finishers). The three week lesson with my symmetry worksheet and step by step visuals are available here.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Stamping with Kindergarten

I love the Elmer books for so many reasons. If you're looking for a non-halloween themed book they do mention dressing up and parades, but in a non-halloween manner in both "Elmer" and "Elmer Again." I recently purchased the latter as an iBook so that I always have it with me on my laptop. And it has audio, so I don't have to read aloud all day and kill my throat.




















I decided to use this as an intro to printmaking. We actually did it in reverse, meaning they did the stamping and printmaking lesson first. During our second session we read the book and cut Elmers out of our already stamped paper. You could also do grids on the elephants or Mondrian Elephants.

Even though one of my kindergarten classes had a fire drill in the middle of our painting day I'm still a huge fan of this lesson. And that's saying a lot. I think it looks much harder than it is, and the students were delighted with the result. Doing the book second was new for me, and it was a nice change of pace from "read the story and make something from the book."

My teacher sample, patterns and two week lesson plan are all bundled up over on TpT.
















Speaking of patterns....am I the only one who varies my patterns slightly so they don't all look the same in the hallway? I made some trunks up and some down and I intentionally place them on the table with some facing left and some facing right.


All the leaves are brown




























Before the leaves get raked away we're squeezing all of the art projects we can out of them. Kindergarten, 1st and 3rd are all working with leaves in the art room and the playground has never been so empty of leaves.

In kindergarten and first grade we've read the book "Mouse's First Fall" to get started. Kindergarten is tracing leaves and using watersoluble crayons to learn about mixing primary colors. First grade is stamping leaves with metallic paint. Third grade is creating draped clay slabs in leaf shapes.

















Lessons available here.