First grade students learned about the Aztec Calendar and how important the sun was.
We looked at a variety of Aztec artworks and talked about using simple lines and shapes on their own sun.

Students used black paper and construction paper crayons, I love the way those crayons look on dark paper - at least Crayola makes one cool medium that doesn't cost an arm and a leg!! (And they don't dry out!!)

Overall, this project took two art classes, which is about two hours, to complete.

With first grade, we added those awesome little mosaic pieces to "jazz up" our pinch pots.

The students could use a pattern if they chose, but it wasn't a requirement.

Most pinch pots were very successful, although I did have to mend a few because the mosaic pieces were pushed into the clay too hard.

Glazing all these cute little pots was a bit much for this art teacher, so I may have to bribe some volunteers to help me out. :)

In first grade we learn about different lines. So, I was given the idea from another colleague about making thin and thick lines to create plaid.

One fun way to show plaid was to create cute mittens with blowing, snowy wind.

They turned out great!!

These cute pumpkins make me smile and giggle every time I walk by them in the hallway. How can you not love these!? The kids mixed red and yellow to make an orange dot on their papers. Those papers were set to dry until the next art class.

During the second art class, the students needed to cut out a mouth, teeth and eyes. I didn't tell them what they were for or how big they needed to be. Afterwards, the big reveal came when I showed them the examples and they began cutting out their pumpkin from their orange dot. They glued everything together, glued the pumpkin to a blue paper, added some blades of grass, and wha-la!
Each one of these pumpkins are so unique and special in their own way - sort of like their creator! Enjoy!
I found this fun project on Flickr. Click here to see more.

The first grade students have been reviewing their basic shapes such as square, rectangle, circle and triangle. Students identified these shapes by pointing them out on a variety of robot pictures. Using a white 12x18" paper, the students were instructed to use these shapes and create a robot of their own. I encouraged to draw large on the paper and to fill the paper up.


Once the drawings were complete, they took a black crayon and traced over all the pencil lines. Using gold, silver and bronze tempera paint, they carefully painted their robots.



To complete their artwork, the students used watercolor paint to paint in the background.

First grade students created these adorable peacocks! Learning about Eric Carle was so fascinating for them; they really enjoyed watching his video Picture Writer.
Using watercolor paints and looking at the color wheel we talk about the warm and cool colors, the students painted one paper with the warm colors and one paper with the cool colors. Next, they worked on the peacock body adding the eyes, beak and legs. I gave them some ideas on the shape of feathers and they were to cut out feathers with the cool colors and add warm colors for decorations. The feathers were glued behind the body and lastly, we glued an actual feather on top of the peacocks head.