3rd Grade - Eric Carle Collages

3rd Grade students learned about the author and artist, Eric Carle.  They painted A LOT of paper to use in their animal/creature collages, just like Eric Carle did!  In the process, they learned about several watercolor painting techniques; wet-on-wet, wax resist and adding salt to the wet paint. 

The following week, students used the painted papers and created a real or imaginary creature, animal or insect.  They drew backgrounds for their collage with crayon. 



Kindergarten - Watercolor Explorations

This is a lesson I like to do with Kindergarteners towards the beginning of the school year.  They are just learning how to use brushes and paints, so I ask them to fill the paper with color - leaving no empty white space.  While they work, there are lots of reminders to rinse their brush between colors!  The next class, when the paintings are dry, they use black markers to draw on top of them.  Some use their imagination to turn their paintings into a scene, and some just use the painting as a colorful background to their drawing.  Simple and fun!

1st Grade - Emotion Portrait Paintings

Students drew 3 portraits portraying the same emotion. The first portrait showed the emotion a little bit, the next a little bit more and the last one showed it the most. They painted colors for their background that also represented the emotion. What a fabulous job they did!