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.