Visit Seven: Magazine Collage Illustrations

Visit Seven: Winter Collage Illustration Project (Continued)

Second Day of Illustration-ing! Today we paired the book This is Not My Hat with collage making. The students LOVED reading the book (and for good reason, it's very entertaining). This book is another example of a story that is told almost entirely through pictures. 

I brought in a pile of magazines (National Geographic) and gave instructions that I thought would be adequate enough, but turned out to need a lot more clarification. I intended us to use the colors and textures from some of the pictures in the magazines to create pictures of our own, however, the children were much more focused on cutting out exactly the image they needed. When they didn't find a bunch of snowmen and Christmas-y things in the pages, they resorted to cutting out a cool wolf, or a funny monkey, or a refrigerator. We ended up with lots of very strange conglomerations of collages. We provided them with construction paper as well, which made a strange mixture of paper materials. 

This was probably my least favorite activity. I was not prepared for the children's understanding of the assignment to be limited. I thought I could just adequately explain what was in my head, and have them perform. My BYU mentor happened to be here observing me this day, and she gave me a number of great pointers and feedback. First of all the project was too high of a level for the first graders. I think collaging in general is a difficult idea, and I didn't have a great example to show them, even though I did model it. Secondly, I should have just provided them with plain construction paper. The magazines were way too distracting. I could have used them for another type of collage where they were actually using the random pictures they found, but for this they were more difficult then helpful.

You can start to see the randomness that is collaging! 

The kids were having SO much fun though. As far as fun art projects with no limitations- this one wins some sort of a prize!

This is me trying to explain the purpose of the collage- but honestly, the kids were coming up with really interesting representations of their thoughts, so I decided to just drop it and stop trying to force them to accomplish the art the way I had intended, and just let the creativity unleash.

Mrs. Ackley and I decided not to use this project as a part of our final book. We ended up with lots of really interesting conglomerations of random pictures. While these were very interesting as pieces of art, they didn't make very good illustrations for the books. Instead we used a separate chalk drawing that the children created later this week. 

We had art that was all over the place! 

Spongebob made an appearance!

Some got a little closer than others...

And then there was this... SO FUN! 

Lots of variety! Still made some incredible art! Love it.

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Visti Six: Watercoloring in Winter

Visit Six: Beginning of Winter Stories - Watercolor

Jordan School District has year round school, and so part way through the semester, Mrs. Ackley's class had a three week break. This worked out perfectly with my school schedule, as I had to do a month of practicum work in another school. We planned a series of awesome art experiences for the month of December. Our focus was to create something that was a definitive displayable product that others could appreciate. Lori wanted to focus on the connection between literacy and art, and requested we do something that integrates those two. Previously we had focused on Science and Visual Art. 

We came up with the idea of reading Children's literature with wonderful illustration to inspire them to write and illustrate their own stories. As a topic for December, we chose "Favorite winter memory." With this prompt the children were able to write a three part story (beginning, middle, and end). They participated in the editing and rewriting process, and were able to publish their work. We wanted this book to be well done and meaningful, and decided that we would make it a present for their parents/families for Christmas. The basic outline for the next three lessons is as follows:

1) Read - Aloud of a Caldecott Award winning book. Below are the books we read, and the art form: 

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka: watercolors

This is not my Hat by Jon Klassen: Collage 

Slowly, Slowly, Slowly by Eric Carle: Tissue Paper Collage

2) Discuss story structure, as well as illustrations. Specifically tie the pictures to the words. Use the illustrations as a model for the type of art that they will be creating. 

3) Have children write section of story that they are working on: beginning, middle, or end. This can be rough draft form. Have them plan or sketch out their picture they imagine. 

4) Use the medium of the illustrator example to create a specific scene from their favorite winter memory.

I didn't get a chance to take very many pictures of this activity! I got a few of the finished products, but I had to rush out pretty quick this day. This was the second time we worked on watercolors, so I was able to spend more time teaching a few techniques. We worked with saturation of color, and played with adding more or less water. We used wet paper and dry paper, and tried to paint with a dry brush. We didn't get a chance to use salt or cotton balls, but those are a very fun variation.

We "read" A Ball for Daisy, a story told entirely through pictures. We talked about the power of illustration to tell a story that even the words don't tell. 

Caldecott winning books that we choose to study the illustrations in. These were a few of my top favorites to show their respective mediums.

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Visit Five: Painting Animals and Creating Diorama Habitats

Visit Five: Painting Animals and Creating Diorama Habitats

For our third and final installment in this animal classification saga, we wrap up our project by painting the clay animals, and creating dioramas for the children to make a habitat in. This day was over an hour visit, but the kids had so much fun with the two activities. I set up a painting station at the back kidney table, and called up groups of 6 to paint. Meanwhile, everyone else worked on creating their dioramas. 

Each child was asked to bring a shoe box from home, and most did. We made up for the difference by cutting some of the larger boxes in half, creating a sort of "open-faced" feel. As far as the materials for the dioramas- we used anything and everything. I brought toothpicks, popsicle sticks, fabric/material, stickers, pipe cleaners, etc. Mrs. Ackley provided lots of really fun things like buttons, felt, feathers, green "grass" paper, and even some hay-like grass. 

We used Crayola washable paint (with 1st grade a definite must!). I made sure to bring a hot glue gun from home, because I knew a number of the students' sculptures were very thin and would be broken off. I helped them glue arms, and feathers, and feet, and baby birds back into place. I loved the colors that the students gave their animals. By separating the paint into different trays, this stayed relatively organized, however the sharing was slightly difficult to organize. 

We had tons of creativity with our dioramas. WOW these first graders went to town. I think this was a project that was open enough for creativity, but still gave parameters that contributed to solid art products. I felt that there was a lot of methodical thought behind everything they did. If they added grass it was because their animal eats grass. But they made sure it also had a water hole, and maybe even another animal friend. I think this was a lesson in empathy- as they had to really think what something else would need to stay alive and be happy. 

SMILE for ART! This is the best reward as an art teacher. Bringing joy to the kids faces as they create small planets for their giant space monster, named Nebula, to feast on when he's hungry.

When I see materials spilling out of a box. I know that's where the thinking is too! Lots of kids went the extra mile to accommodate for their newfound animals. 

Art can be messy, and that's just fine. 

Here are the best up close pictures I have of our finished animals. Wish I had taken individual pictures, or got a picture of the whole class zoo we created! I never got a chance to take pictures of the completed dioramas! What a shame, because this was my personal favorite project! I was pleased with the integration that occurred, and really happy with how their animals turned out. 

Any animal would be lucky to live in these fabulous habitat homes, right? First Grade did incredible with this activity. I would do it again in a heart beat. I felt like we may have been able to spread it out a little bit more, and I wish I had completed diorama and animal pictures to show. All in all, I think this was one of the more enjoyable projects for all involved.

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