Happy International Dot Day!

Here’s a quick video of my students having fun moving dots on their interactive, collaborative dot display, hung up in the hallway, inspired by the book “The Dot” by Peter Reynolds! 

The interactive, collaborative dot display was created by my 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders. 

On the first day of art, students played a fun, collaborative art game called “Roll with it” (I discuss this in more detail in a previous post).

Students rolled dice and whatever number they rolled, they were instructed to draw certain lines or shapes using whatever color they wanted with marker. ( I posted a list of what to draw according to what number on the whiteboard so everyone could see).

After drawing, they passed their paper to the person to their right at their table. They continued rolling the dice drawing and passing, eventually creating an abstract picture.

The papers were then hole punched with a large hole puncher and assembled together, creating one giant dot, with velcro adhesive on felt boards. Each grade had their own dot panel (2nd had the red panel, 3rd had the yellow and 4th had the blue panel).

Students learned about the 7 Elements of art (line, shape, color, value, form, texture, space) and that ALL artwork is created using at least one of these elements!

They also learned about collaborative art, and interactive art! The panels are currently hanging in the 2nd and 3rd grade classroom hallway by the cafeteria.

Students and staff can interact with the art and move the dots around creating new images and shapes on the other orange, green and purple panels! As you can see in the video above, kids had so much fun interacting with their artwork!

Artwork inspired by the book THE DOT by Peter Reynolds and International Dot Day (September 15, 2017) 

5th Grade

On the first day of art for 5th graders, students had a blast creating “Paper Towers”! Below is a time-lapse video I took of them creating! 

Students at each table were a team and had to build the tallest paper tower using only 20 sheets of newspaper and 1 roll of masking tape. They had 5 minutes to brainstorm ways to create their tower without touching the paper or tape, then had 10 minutes to construct their towers. We talked about how it’s more about working together as a team rather than winning. Kids had so much fun creating them and worked well together as a team!

1st Grade 

On the first day of art for first graders, kids participated in a quick art lesson I called “What do YOU see?”. I read them the story Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg, then each student received a paper that had a random line or shape drawn on it (or both lines and shapes) and they used their imagination to create something out of it. The black lines drawn in sharpie were the original lines given. They did a fantastic job using their creativity and came up with some wonderful images!

My 4th grade classes just finished up a quick 1 day art lesson on their 2nd day of art, creating self-portraits drawn inside a cell phone. I saw the idea on Instagram from another art teacher- thank you Katy Hanson for the idea!!

This week, ALL my classes started their sketchbook cover drawings. I have all my students create their own sketchbooks in the beginning of every year, and each grade has a different art lesson creating a different drawing for their cover!

1st graders learn about line, and after reading the book Lines That Wiggle, they draw overlapping loopy lines and color in the shapes the lines create, 2nd graders create a warm/cool hand with patterns, 3rd graders create a drawing of an art tool showing 4 viewpoints of their chosen tool, 4th graders create a unique design using their initials and analogous colors, and 5th graders create a comic book cover style drawing and create their own unique superhero!

I’ll be posting more on these and others soon! Thanks for visiting my blog!

Best,

Mollie