Painting Spring
Allow students opportunity to be budding artists by painting flowers.
Learning to draw means learning to see! Painting flowers is a fantastic way to give students opportunity to create by looking at, thinking about, and discovering. It is the perfect way to help students see that nature is made from a vast amount of shapes, colors, and textures.
I begin my flower painting lesson by showing my students examples of great artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gough. It is very powerful to show their work of art side-by-side to the real object; in this case a flower.
After a mini-lesson looking closely at the shapes we can use to draw a flower and experimenting with some lines and shapes on doodle paper, it is time to fill the art center with the proper tools to inspire art.
I hang real photos of flowers, paintings of flowers, and place several bouquets of real flowers in the area. Because my job from this point on is to simply provide inspiration, I have now set the stage.
I am always sure to stock the art area with paints, brushes, pastels, kwiksticks, chalk, crayons, pencils, materials for collage such as tissue paper, pom-poms, etc. With this well-stocked supply of art materials and the inspiration of paintings, photos, and relia, the students are always eager to create their masterpiece.
One important step of inspiring young artists is to treat their art with the professionalism it deserves. Make sure their work is signed and displayed!
Georgia O'Keefe? No just a kindergartner in action.
This is a display of giant flowers made in the art room under the guidance of "Art Coach."
Here are two of my favorite thematic units to guide your cross-curricular teaching. Click on the picture to read the contents. Also available at TPT.
