Second Grade, Third Grade, Oh My!!!!

We added another class to our day (the art/music/PE) this week, and boy, do the mornings go fast now!  Adaptive art is first thing, and I'll talk about all of it in a future post, but for now, second and third grades:

Second grade has been busy learning about texture.  We took notes in our sketchbooks:

And then did a simple crayon rubbing on a 6 x 9 paper, then painted it green (more on that later).  
The next time they came to art, we read The Lady With The Alligator Purse by Nadine Bernard Westcott and looked for things that have texture.  (Hint, hint, it's the alligator purse).  Students then drew their own ladies.  They could be a grandma type or cool teenager type, whatever kind of babysitter figure they'd want.  Here are some student examples:

Students drew in pencil on 12 x 18 papers, making sure her head went to the top and her feet to the bottom.  We'll paint our ladies with tempera block paint next time and use our texture papers to add an alligator purse.  I'll post finished work in a week or so.  They're doing a great job!

Third grade is also using their sketchbooks to take notes, but we've been talking art history.  Specifically, the first artists, why we have art, why art's important--you know, the Big Idea sort of thing.  After our discussion and note-taking, students used torn paper "hills", chalk and paper towels to make cave-like papers:

 Shown with the manilla paper "hill" template.

 Without the paper hill template--we throw the "hills" away when we're done.



They'll add animals with oil pastel next time.  This is a great lesson I got from the book Dynamic Art Projects for Children that I modified to fit my lesson/objectives/learning targets.  Speaking of learning targets, that could be a post all to itself, and maybe it will be in the future, as it's something I'm struggling with a bit right now.

Here's a picture of the book for those of us who always remember better with a photo:

Happy art teaching!!!