I Love ART DICE

Found a giant pair of red neoprene dice at the dollar store about a billion years ago and couldn't resist.  I knew I would use them for something school related one day and that one day finally came.  A little white gesso and black paint transformed them into "art dice".  I won't lie.  I shamelessly (stole) borrowed this idea from Tinkerlab.  

I like to start the year out with something simple and something "line" related.  It was great.  Little kids loved rolling the dice to create their designs and we reviewed line quality including direction words:  horizontal, vertical, diagonal.  We took a short break to review classroom rules and expectations while the paint dried and then I let them color with crayons.

Third graders let their designs dry overnight.  They will paint them with primary colors during our next class.  Here are some shots of kids working and their results in progress.

Thank you TinkerLab...fabulous idea!

I found this project gave me a great opportunity to check out how kids are holding the crayon and give a little guidance on writing grip vs. drawing grip.  Back up a little and straighten out the forefinger a bit.  Use the arm to color, not just the fingers.

Primary Warms Up with Lines

Primary students are warming up with lines today.
Lines are so very simple, yet they carry so much meaning.   After talking about, and naming the many kinds of lines we know.  We looked at "A Child's Game" by Paul Klee.  Paul Klee makes fabulous lines.  We read a little bit about the painting in the book Art for Children. We learned that this style of painting is called abstract.
Today we worked with black paint and white paint.  We painted right on top of the Helen Frankenthaler-style paintings we made last week.  We decided that our paintings could look real or our paintings could be abstract.  Our goal was to show at least five different kinds of lines.   

 

Art for Children is a wonderful series of children's books. Each book features the work of a different artist.

 And here is Paul Klee's painting called "A Child's Game."Can you see the little girl?  Can you see the goose?

The Elements of Art

Of all the elements of art, line is the most basic. Line, as an element of art, is the focus of this quick beginning art project. In this lesson we discussed the three attributes of line: direction (vertical, horizontal, diagonal), measure (thick/thin, long/short), and quality (straight, zig zag, curving, looping, wavy, meandering, broken, spiral, etc.). We practiced making a variety of lines and combined lines to create patterns. We put our pattens to use in two special projects. This one, "Wild Hair Day", asks students to create a character with a wild hair do, to divide the design into a variety of shapes, and to fill the shapes with beautiful and carefully drawn line and pattern. The results are pretty amusing and provide plenty of practice for line control and variety. This project was completed by a fifth grade student. Fifth grade line designs are on exhibit on the board near the front entrance to Currier Memorial.
Our Fourth grade students enjoyed a similar lesson, but demonstrated their knowledge of line by completing a line design owl. Their work is in progress but I will post it soon.