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Category Archives: first grade

Complementary Color Collages– 1st Grade

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Colorful abstract collage featuring geometric shapes in orange, blue, and neon red on a clean white background using complementary colors.

Complementary Color Collages by the 1st Grade This project introduces the first graders to complementary colors.  I show them the color wheel and I explain how the complementary colors are across from each other on the color wheel.  They are the “opposites”.  If you mix the two of them together you would get a brownish or grayish color.  We talk about the primary/secondary colors and focus on the pairs of red + green, blue + orange, and violet + yellow.  … Read more… →

Alphabet Art: First Grade

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Abstract crayon drawing with overlapping letters and various colorful geometric shapes filling the entire canvas, resembling vibrant Alphabet Art created by a 1st Grade classroom.

This is a lesson I love to teach at the beginning of the year.  The first graders create a picture using letters.  I show them how draw the letters and stack them, twisting and turning the page, making sure to connect the letters.  Below is an example of the shapes formed from the letters.  I really loved this one, because even though the boy used letters (a lot of “O’s) to make the design, it is very abstract and not … Read more… →

More Sketchbook Covers for Elementary School Art Journals

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Colorful drawing with birds, clouds, and candies surrounding the name "Jenny" in large, decorated letters. Ideal for sketchbook covers or elementary school art journals.

All of my classes have been busy making sketchbook covers.  Here are a few more assignments by grade level: 1st Grade Initials:I saw this idea at Art Projects for Kids. The background has crayon texture rubbings and watercolor paint. 3rd Grade:  The students wrote their names in cursive and then surrounded the name with repeating colorful lines.   4th/5th Grade Names:  They drew their names and then covered the negative space with patterns.  Similar to this idea… Name Tangles.   … Read more… →

Sketchbook Covers for Kids

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Abstract art with colorful circles and patterns, including multi-colored segments, stars, and various shapes on a white background.

It has been a busy 2 weeks and a rough transition back to school.  The actual “school” part has been just fine.  The problems have been with coordinating my schedule and “life balance.”  I will talk about that more at the end of this post, but first I will show you some pretty pictures. We have been making sketchbook covers from donated file tab dividers.  My sister-in-law works in medical records and they were transferring everything over to digital, so … Read more… →

Tissue Paper Fun

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Two tissue paper stained glass artworks hang in a window, one with blue-green shapes and the other with red-orange hearts.

Our last summer art workshop was a fun one!  We decoupaged tissue paper on to glass vases.  The cylindrical ones could be candle holders.  We tore and cut tissue paper and adhered them to the glasses with Matte Medium.  I hate the smell of mod-podge, so I rarely use it.  I get headaches from it, does anyone else?  I figure if I get headaches from it, it probably is not good for the kids to inhale.  This Blick Matte Medium … Read more… →

Body Pictures– Summer Camp

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A large paper with a child’s drawing of a person, decorated with various items and colors, is displayed in a classroom.

I am teaching 3 summer art sessions.  Each session is two hours long with one or two art projects.  For this session, I had 2 students going into 4/5th grade, 2 students who just finished kindergarten, and one student going into kindergarten.  It was a small class, which was perfect for this project, since the pictures were LARGE. To start, we traced our bodies on large butcher paper.  Then, we outlined them with markers and used collage materials (magazine images, … Read more… →

First Grade Bird Paintings– Audubon

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Child's drawing of an owl and a small bird on a tree branch with a colorful sky background and green leaves.

These beautiful bird paintings were drawn and painted by first graders.  The students learned about the artist John James Audubon and we read a book about his life. I love this book about Audubon, because it has beautiful pictures and ties science and art together nicely. The students looked at pictures of birds and drew them with crayons.  Then we painted the background with tempera cakes.  This is a lovely picture.. too bad we didn’t use thicker paper, it wrinkled … Read more… →

Positive/Negative Space Stencils– First Grade

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Colorful abstract drawing with fish shapes, a star, and various geometric patterns on a patchwork background, utilizing positive and negative space techniques.

Here are some fun pictures we made by creating our own stencils. First, the kids looked at little animal figurines for ideas.  I did not limit them to drawing just the animals, so some chose to turn their animals into mythical creatures or draw something else entirely.  They drew their animal on tag board, cut it out and then used that as a stencil. The students traced their animal stencil over and over again, flipping it around and arranging their … Read more… →

Winter Landscapes

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Child's drawing of a landscape with tents, a tree, a river, people, a camel, and faint mountains in the background.

2nd Grade Winter Landscapes For this project, we read a book about Grandma Moses:  Grandma Moses (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists) We discussed how to draw a river or road showing depth (by drawing it converging to a point in the distance).  We talked about using size variation to show distance while drawing houses and other objects.  The students cut out mountains from gray paper and a snowy patch from white paper (I walked them through this step-by-step).  … Read more… →

Clay Butterflies– 1st Grade

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A colorful clay butterfly with yellow wings outlined in orange and a blue body, set against a white background.

These lovely clay butterflies were made by the 1st graders.  Each student traced their hands to make the wings.  Some of the little parts fell off, so I would recommend making sure that the kids don’t roll their slabs too thin.  I found this lesson in the book, The Clay Lady Way Textbook.  I was able to flip through this book at one of the National Art Ed conferences and decided it would be worth the investment. 

Beautiful Oops

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A child's drawing of a green, round creature with a big smile, yellow background, and "WAW" written beside it captures the creativity often seen in a children's book like *Beautiful Oops*.

If you haven’t seen Beautiful Oops yet, you must find a copy and look at it.. It’s my favorite book ever! The first graders looked at this book in class and then they were presented with a creative challenge.  Each child chose a piece of colored paper with a hole in it.  Holes of various sizes were pre-cut into papers of various colors.  They had to figure out how to turn this “oops” piece of paper into a work of … Read more… →

Face Prints with Cardboard–1st Grade

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A child's black ink drawing of a smiling face with spiky hair, triangular nose, and crossed lines for eyes on a piece of cardboard.

This week the 1st graders started making printed pictures of faces. 1. Cut strips of cardboard in varying widths.2.  Place small paper plates with black paint on tables.  Give each child a piece of paper.  Demonstrate how you can dip the edges of the cardboard in paint and print lines.  Next week, we will add color with crayons and markers.  I also have a box of alphabet rubberstamps which they will use to add text to their pictures if they … Read more… →

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