Color Robots - Kindergarten Collage of Shapes

 Kindergarten students created these fun collage robots while learning about shape and reviewing color. 



We started our project by using stamping different sized circles and dots to create a fun background. Students learned that you can paint with more things than a paintbrush. Plastic cups, paper cups, and cotton swabs can be fun painting tools.

Then students identified the shapes they could use in their robots as they painted them with a solid color. 

The next class it was time to put our robots together! Students glued their shapes in place, added details and embellishments with oil pastels, pipe cleaners, sequins, and plastic caps. Oh What Fun!!

This Robot is jumping for joy!!

Grant Wood Inspired Landscape Collages

3rd Grade students created these painted paper collage works inspired by Grant Wood. 

The concept of Intermediate colors (Tertiary colors) has been one that my students sometimes have a tough time getting. I would go over the color wheel with them, but we didn't spend much time on it. This year I decided to try something a bit different with my Grant Wood landscape collage project. We spent a couple art classes making painted papers (which students love to do!). I had students pair up so that they could work together. They chose a primary and a secondary color by it to mix into an intermediate color. They mixed the color together on a paper plate and each painted a paper. They used some painting combs or craft sticks to draw some texture into the paint before putting it on the drying rack. The goal was for each pair to mix all six intermediate colors in the two painting classes.

Once we had our papers painted, the students took a look at landscape paintings by Grant Wood. We talked about his use of overlapping and shape. They chose a construction paper for the "sky" color and began to cut and put together their own landscape collage. I encouraged student to split their papers in half (the long way) and trade one of the halves with another student so they would have even more variety for their collage.

The finished projects were awesome!

Check out more of them on Artsonia - Washington Elementary and

Roosevelt Elementary

See how we took these artworks to a new level using iPads. We added words to our images. See my post "iPad Art - Words and Landscapes"

Grant Wood Inspired Landscape Collage

A fun collage project with painted papers!

I was getting one of my favorite lessons from last school year ready to send into The Teaching Palette today and decided I'd post it here. My goal for this blog is to share all the project I did last school year here. I find so many great ideas from all of you creative art teachers that I want to be sure and give back some great ideas. As art educators we are always "stealing" from each other to better our own lessons for our students. I think we are the one group of professionals that do not care if our ideas are copied!

Any way...back to the lesson - 

This project took me 3 art days with my students. I took one day to introduce Grant Wood to them and we discussed his art - especially landscapes. We talked about how he showed distance and space in his paintings and we talked about how the sections of land contained different lines, colors, and textures.

Day 2 was their favorite - and mine! A busy art studio day of painting papers using brushes and lots of other painting tools to create texture, color, and design into the papers. The ooo's and ah's that I heard as they looked around at each other's papers. "How did you get that?! Oh...can I use that tool next?!"

It was a fun art time of total creativity. It was all about the process!  

The hardest part was reminding them that if they didn't put their name on the back before beginning painting  - they most likely would not get that paper to use next week.

The last day was spent creating the landscapes. This too was a fun time. Students shared papers with each other so that they would have many different sections on their landscape. By the end of class we had a box filled with painted paper scraps and a whole class full of interesting landscapes.

Some students who worked slowly just had levels of ground for their landscapes. Students who were quicker with their cutting and gluing had time to add more paper shapes to create trees, bushes, houses, and crops to their pictures.

I helped students as they finished to mount their picture on another paper  - some two colors to add extra interest to the finished work. 

Newspaper Self-Portrait Collage

This was one of the projects I did with my 4th graders for my "Reuse, Recycle, & Recreate" unit.





Each year I do self-portraits with all my students so a mention that we were going to begin our self-portraits with my fourth graders led to the inquiry, "how are we going to do them this year? Are we going to paint? Rip paper? Oil pastels like last year?" As I laughed at their questions, I held up a newspaper and told them, "We are going to use this." That got them wondering!

We discussed the element of value and I had them do a value scale using pencil. As students were working on their value scales I photographed them. Using GimpI (a free alternative to Photoshop)I desaturated the photos to black and white and used the posterize filter to limit the number of values so students could see the different values in their photo more easily.

Students use the photos as a reference as they worked to recreate a self-portrait using the different values of ink in the news paper. The project took most students 2-45 minute class periods to complete.

Here are a couple of student examples:

A couple of reflection notes on this project -
* Many of my 4th graders found this a project a bit of a challenge. I think that moving it up to 5th or 6th grade might be a better fit for students in my school.

* As some students worked I watched them stop and read parts of the newspaper. This made me think that having students include words and/or phrases they find important to them into the portraits would be a great idea. I was in a bit of a time crunch trying to get these done before our Family Art Night so I didn't incorporate this idea then - but would definitely in the future.