It's Gogh Time

School Wide Collaborative Flower Collage Color Wheel * This is one project that fits a TON of art learning into it! I started my school year off with this project and could not be happier with the results. In the end I created two, floor to ceiling pieces for both campus that I teach at in my school (K-2 and 3-5). This was my first year at a new school and this lesson really allowed me to assess student ability and background knowledge. I also was able to adjust the pacing based on grade levels. For example 3-5th grade finished what 1-2 did in two lessons and kindergarten did in three lessons. So here's how it went!  Part 1: Students learned about primary colors and why they are important. They then painted in a small rectangle of paper with their primary colors; one red, one yellow, and one blue. Part 2: Together we went over our secondary colors . We did a whole class "science experiment" in which we took cups water mixed with tempera paint in our prim...

One Day Lego Self Portrait Lesson * I needed a quick one day project before winter break and this was an awesome lesson to fill in with. I got this lesson from another art blog Art.Eat.Tie Dye.Repeat (highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already) and tweaked it to fit for my first graders.  First we put on our thinking caps and cranked them back to last year when they drew self-portraits. We had a nice discussion about what a self-portrait is and isn't.  Second they told me the shapes we can see in a lego. The legs are rectangles, the head is a circle, or is it a square? Why not somewhere in the middle? A square with round edges! Then we talked about making something personalized. How can we tell its a self-portrait and not just a portrait  Third students created their self-portraits adding color using their drawing materials.  This is one of my particularly gifted artists. She did an amazing job with her portrait even getting the det...