Terra Cotta Bowls!

Terra Cotta Bowls!

So Today I came back to my lovely 1st grade class to teach art!

In class they are learning about Native Americans because of Thanksgiving coming up! So I decided that making something that resembled Native American pottery would be great!

I had a presentation about Native American Pottery and what it looks like. We talked about geometric patterns and drew our own designs on paper.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/137OrVIMAQH97NVMBAm9AHLbWevH9MY5TnmrQ0BJ1Qgc/edit?usp=sharing

After I presented to them on how to make a pinch bowl. We used Terra Cotta Air-dry clay from Hobby Lobby. I introduced to them words like sphere and geometric patterns. I also used words like lobster claws and mushroom to describe how we were making the bowls.

Then I had them recreate the patterns that they made on their paper onto their bowls. Some did this and some decided to get a little more creative.

Next time we will paint the bowls with tempera paint!
*Let bowls dry for 24 hours or more. We gave the weekend for the bowls to dry.

PAINTING!!

*the following Monday

Caution: These bowls are super fragile! I broke my bowl when I put it in my bag! Let the children know that they need to be very careful while painting them!

The students were only given the primary colors, yellow, blue, and red. They were asked and shown how to make different colors like orange and purple. They were encouraged to create patterns and their own colors in their painting. 

Many made stripes and blocks of colors on their bowls. 

 They were super excited about the colors they discovered!

Tip: When students are finished painting have them paint (the excess paint) on a large white paper and this will create cool free collage paper!

 Here is the bowl I made with the kids! They helped me pick the colors

 This is Ms. Mortensen's bowl!

These bowls were on display at their teacher conference and then the parents were able to take their bowls home!

First Art Class, Portraits!

Today was my first day in the classroom. I am going to be honest, I was a bit scared! I have never taught 1st graders before! What do I do?
I was greeted warmly by the class. They welcomed my mentor Vicki and myself with songs and and showed us what mathematicians they were! Oh how simple it was to be in 1st grade again!
The kids were so cute! They did not know anything about me but would say hello and hug me!

After observing it was time to teach!

They had previously been learning about themselves as a person and about their skeletons in class!

I first talked to them about what things we all had in common like our skeletons and they came up with some great answers! Then I introduced that we all had a face! I then had certain students from the class come up who had a round, oval, and square head. We talked about different face shapes and had them draw their own face shapes. Then I explained to them about how to draw the rest of the face on the white board. I had them to start the guidelines with yellow color pencil and to draw other parts with color. We used yellow because it is light enough that you can barely see it and dark enough they can match up facial features on the lines.

Things went out of order a few times but it worked out! I had the students to look at the mirrors and to draw that they saw! We are all different and I wanted them to know that they should draw who they are!  Here are some pictures of what they came up with!
Some decided to draw boarders! What a great idea!