Mini Mosaics

Here are some pictures of a 3 day lesson with 1st grade. First, I introduced what mosaics are and showed some ancient and modern examples. I showed them mosaics made out of tile, stone, food, and bottle caps! (They thought the food one was pretty rad!) 

We used mini mosaic squares that are reversible with color on each side. They are made out of a thick paper sort of like tag board. We drew our design- something simple like a heart, butterfly, fish, lightning bolt...etc and then started arranging and gluing.

I made a BIG mosaic for early finishers to help out with that spelled out "Shiloh" for our school. To make it I drew a grid with a ruler and marked each space with a B, R, Y, or O and students placed the corresponding color on the space. It was cool to have a group project in the mix, too!

One of my mosaic samples on the white board.

Some finished mosaics!

Illuminated Letters

3rd grade made these awesome Illuminated Letters out of metal tooling. We read the book Illuminations by Jonathan Hunt which is an A-Z book with each word representing something from the Medieval Times including Scribe & Illuminations. We looked at examples from actual books like the Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Some quick examples I drew on the board

Practicing in our sketchbooks

 

 

My example

This is just metal tooling over a square of cardboard.

We painted a layer of black tempera to give it more contrast

 

Abstract Expressionism

I love this lesson. Maybe because it's easy. Maybe because the kids have a lot of freedom to make choices. But no, it's because they AMAZE me with their ideas! 

Some hand outs for each table...

We began by looking at images of Abstract Expressionists/Color field painters such as Hans Hoffman, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler...etc

We talked about post WWII and what the world would have been like at the time & how that influenced art that was being made.

We broke out our sketchbooks and did some drawing to get ideas.

Some even took notes while I was talking!! GASP! Amazingness.

I encouraged them to mix styles of different artists and add their own twist to it...

This kid ended up making like 4 practice sketches. I love that he was so into the Ab Ex style!

A few students wanted to add a collage element with black and white words from magazines...A little Rauschenberg/Picasso influence perhaps? Not quite Ab Ex but I like it!

We contained our Pollock paint-flinging to a box! :]

Some kiddos wanted to break out the rulers ala Hans Hoffman

I'll post more when they finish...I couldn't be more proud of my 5th graders!