Printmaking

I taught this lesson along with a partner. For this lesson, we taught the students about how printmaking works and also patterns. We gave each student a Styrofoam sheet to use for their project, they had to cut the Styrofoam in half because there was two parts of this lesson. To help students learn better, we went step by step with the students over the printmaking process. The students were told to create a pattern using a pencil on one half of there Styrofoam sheet. After they have their pattern created and imprinted onto the Styrofoam, they took a roller with paint and converted the pattern onto the construction paper by printmaking. They had to create a color pattern on their construction paper with the printmaking pattern. Then we had them brainstorm three symbols, logos, or designs that had meaning to them and create them on their second Styrofoam half. Then they need to take their paint roller and print their symbols, logos, and designs onto the construction paper.

An extension activity that could be done with this is having the students write three paragraphs about the meaning behind their symbols, designs, or logos. This would be a cool introductory activity because students could learn about each other from this.

This is our bulletin board we created for our lesson. We titled it, "Printmaking About Us" because
 they created symbols, logos, or designs about them. Then we hung all the students projects up on the bulletin board and tried spreading it out as best as we could. By displaying students work, it motivates them to do their best and allows for them to feel good about their work and boost their self-esteem because their work is on display for anyone to see.

Clay Pinch Pots

For this lesson, we learned about clay and how to make a pinch pot. We were given clay and told to make a clay pinch pot but our pinch pot had to be an animal of our choice. We had to pinch and mold the clay into the shape of our animal. After we created our animal we had to use some extra clay to make additions to our animal. I created a cat and the additions I made with clay were the tail, the eyes, and the ears. Then we had a little pick and we had to make subtractions from our animal and for this I made stripes on my cat and also made the eyeballs, nose, whiskers, and mouth.

An extension activity that would be cool for this is to project is to create an acrostic poem with language arts using the letters of the animal they created and describe their mom with those letters. They could also paint the pinch pot as well; this would be a great mother's day gift with the pinch pot and poem.

Rainbow Craft

For this lesson, we learned about primary and secondary colors; we also learned about the artist Wassily Kandinsky. We then had to mix primary colors together to make secondary colors for our rainbow. Then we took a sponge and created a rainbow with the primary colors and the secondary colors we made by dabbing and painting with a sponge. We also had to paint a landscape of whatever we wanted using the primary and secondary colors. After we painted the landscape and it dried, we then glued our rainbow onto the landscape. I really liked this lesson because it let students be creative by choosing whatever landscape they wanted and then creating it. I really love baseball and softball so I chose a field as my landscape.

An extension activity that could be done with this lesson is creating a whole scene instead of just a landscape. This was a craft unit so we could create a whole scene by adding people or animals or other things with material such as construction paper and then the students could write a story about what is happening in their scene.

3-D Play-Doh

For this lesson, we learned about three dimensional designs and also the foreground, middle ground, and background. They also incorporated Dr. Seuss in their lesson by showing examples of some of his characters. We had to create a Dr. Seuss type creature out of play doh. First, we had to create our construction paper scenery; we had to create a foreground, a middle ground, and background. Then we drew a picture of what our creature would look like. Finally, we created our creature out of play doh. We had to use at least three materials provided either for the scenery or on the creature. Children would really enjoy creating their own creature. We then had to create a mad lib story about our creature as well.

An extension activity that could be done with this project is creating a Dr. Seuss type of book about our creature using rhyming like Dr. Seuss did. Students would enjoy creating a book about their character and they could learn about rhyming words while doing this.

Eric Carle Paper Project

For this lesson, we learned about Eric Carle and had to create an animal with paper. Eric Carle is a famous author and illustrator who has created many stories about animals. For our art project with this lesson, we had to create an animal using different pieces of paper. We were given an outline of an animal we chose and had to cut out pieces of paper to fill in the template. We had several choices of paper to use and couldn't use just the same piece for the whole animal. This was a fun activity that students would enjoy because they get to choose an animal they like and cut out paper to create that animal. We then wrote a brief description about our animal.

An extension activity we could do for this lesson involves language arts. We wrote a brief description of our animal we created but another activity we could've done with this project is to write a story involving our animal and then create a title page with a background for the animal we just made. This goes well with Eric Carle because he is an author and illustrator.