Global Art Lesson Pack + Bonus Wish Pouch Lesson

 

 PLUS a special bonus lesson plan from Handwork Homeschool!

The lesson pack includes these four multimedia art projects:

African masks            French Windows      India Elephants      3-D Chinese Lanterns

 Over 38 pages of instructions including:

• Recommended literature to read with project 
•  Documentation "worksheets" (arts integration)
• Research based learning with non-fiction sources
• Featured art skills and adaptations for younger and older students
• Each art project is tied to an artist or art object

All this for only $5.99!
Recommended for Kindergarten through Second Grade 

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Artist Study: Willem de Kooning

"Light in August"  1947  

In a recent museum class I taught - we explored the world of the gray scale and the work of Willem de Kooning.   We looked at several examples of de Kooning's work and identified the values lightest to darkest (the gray scale).

STEP ONE:  Make your own gray scale tool!

 You will need a paint stick, gray paint chips and glue.

I like the paint chips with the little window.  It is just like a real

gray scale artist's tool!

Glue the paint chips on to the stick going from light to dark.

Ta da!  You have a gray scale tool.

STEP TWO:  Paint a gray scale painting. 

I gave the children black sharpies to draw a picture.

We used gray watercolor (watered down black).

STEP THREE:  Play "Musical Values."

Play upbeat music!

Using construction paper in the different gray scale values - the children

shuffled the paper to create a large swirl of values.

When I stopped the music - they had to stand on a value and name it.

Lightest, lighter, light, dark, darker, or darkest.

STEP FOUR:  Create your own de Kooning style painting.

I cut an old phone book and black construction paper into random shapes.

The children picked what they wanted and glued them down on white paper.

(watered down glue and a foam brush work well)

Next, they painted black abstract lines and shapes.

Here is a peek at some of the work of the class:

Flower Study

One of the last big projects I did with the children this year was a flower study.  We looked at the work of Georgia O'Keefe and how she painted her flowers to fill the entire canvas.  We noted three things that Georgia O'Keefe did:

     She painted the flowers to the edges of the canvas.
     She used just 3 to 4 main colors on the flower paintings.
     She painted a simple background.

FLOWER STUDY1
The main objective was to get the children to draw huge flowers.  I stressed that their flowers needed to touch each side of the paper.

 Drew the flower with pencil and traced it in a sharpie pen.  (Watercolor paper)

 I gave the children three colors - either a cool palette (blue, green and purple) or a warm palette (red, orange and yellow).  I simply cut the colors off the strip.

FLOWER STUDY 2
For this second study - we moved from watercolor to tempera paints.  The drawing was the same - but no sharpie!  I used a heavy cardstock paper and cheap foam brushes from Michaels.  Again - I put out a cool and warm palette.

I used a foam plate for the paint - perfect with three sections.

We finished with painting flowers on canvases using acrylics.  Unfortunately, I failed to take photos!!  But the end results were beautiful.  You can buy panel canvases from Dick Blick very reasonably and I used the dollar acrylic paint from Michaels.  Here is a peek at a photo a parent took:

Wassily Kandinsky Study, Part 2

This is a project that Kelsey Howard created this summer at art camp.  It was amazing and the children loved it.  I had to video tape it and share it with you.  I wanted to bring a Kandinsky project --- little did I know that Kelsey had a deep understanding of his work.   She created this lesson on sound, shape and color.  You must watch the videos to see her lead the children.  It is magic!

Step One:  Kelsey told a story of the sound of rocks hitting the surface of the water.  The children made the sound with her.   The story told the children how the rocks made a rippling effect - sound, shape, and color.

The children drew the "rock" ripples - circles within circles.  For the rest of the lesson - watch the two videos below!!

Video 1 shows how she used music to add color.

Video 2 shows how she connected the sound, shape and color in a powerful way!

Wassily Kandinsky Study, Part 1

 Kandinsky's Circles is a wonderful inspiration piece.  Here is a super easy art piece for the young child.  It is great tracing and cutting practice. 

 METHOD:  I made three sizes of circle tracers - large, medium and small.  (I used round caps and such to make the tracers out of manila folders.)  I had the children trace six circles of each size in six different colors.  They cut out the circles and stacked them from largest to smallest.  I told them to make sure each stack had different color circles.  I let them find their own way to construct the piece. They used glue sticks. 

 This child built each stack, one at a time.

 This child put all the large circles down first.  Then the medium sized circles and so on!

Our inspiration piece:  Kandinsky's Circles.