Notes on Chapter 16: A Sequential Curriculum for Grades 1 and 2

First and second graders typically:

• Are active and easily excited; use almost any topic as motivation
• Enjoy working with their hands
• Take great pride in their work
• Exhibit strong feelings of possessiveness
• Are eager to learn, do not underteach
• Want to be first; assign special responsibilities
• Have a limited attention span and are easily fatigued; give a series of objectives throughout lesson rather than all at the beginning
• Have feelings that are easily hurt; praise when students arrive at their “own way”
• Are alternately cooperative and uncooperative
• Usually can grasp only one idea at a time
• Delight in imaginative games, dances, stories, and plays; like to pretend and engage in make-believe
• Desire the approval of classmates and teachers
• Enjoy fantasy; use fantasy as motivation
• Are interested in new things to touch and taste; use tactile motivations
• Are fascinated by moving and mechanical devices
• Enjoy TV, illustrated books, movies, picnics, school field trips, new clothes, and pets

ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
Shapes
Five- and six-year-olds will typically:

• Draw the geometric symbols of the circle, square, triangle, oval, and rectangle
• Employ a basic symbol, such as a circle, to depict varied visual images-the sun, a head, a table, a flower blossom, a tree, a body, a room
• Use combinations of symbols that differ from those their classmates use
• Depict simplified representations and are not too concerned with details

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Change slowly from geometric, symbolic interpretations to more specific characterization and delineation
• Use more details in their depictions

Size
Five- and six-year-olds typically:

• Use emotional exaggeration of size, enlarging things that are important to them and omitting features that are not

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Approximate more representative proportions

Color
Five- and six-year-olds typically:

• Use color in a personal or emotional context without regard to its identity

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Use color in a local, stereotypical way

Space
Five- and six-year-olds typically:

• Employ a baseline as a foundation
• Draw both the inside and outside of an object

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Begin to place distant objects higher on the page, although objects are often drawn the same size
• Use a foldover technique, turning their papers completely around as they draw

Objects
Five- and six-year-olds typically:

• Draw things intuitively as they know them

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Draw objects as they know them to be rather than how they see them at the moments

The Human Figure
Five- and six-year-olds typically:

• Devise a variety of interpretations or schemata depending on their experience

Some six-year-olds and most seven-year-olds typically:

• Begin to use apparel and detail to distinguish sexes

TEACHING ART
Teaching Drawing

• Discourage from rushing to finish by scribbling backgrounds haphazardly
• Like to use their pictures to tell stories
• Introduce students to various tools for making linear images
• Praise their discovery of various line patterns
• Will use fold-over and x-ray drawing
• Introduce to line drawing, shades and value, color, and pattern
• Provide opportunity to draw real objects
• Encourage to fill the page

Teaching Cutting, Pasting, and Collage

• Need to develop scissor skills
• Provide left-handed scissors
• Demonstrate how to use glue economically
• Provide opportunities to paste little shapes onto large shapes

Teaching Printmaking

• Can be made with vegetables, found objects, clay pieces, erasures, cellulose scraps, or hands and fingers

Teaching Ceramics

• Each student should have a clay ball about the size of a grapefruit
• Encourage students to squeeze, pinch, poke, and stretch clay
• Teach them how to make coils and balls
• Encourage students to hold clay while they work with it
• Can create simple sculptural forms, such as animals
• Can make simple pinch pots

ART CRITICISM, ART HISTORY, AND AESTHETICS

• They can begin to develop a language for art criticism, with the manes of the formal elements
• Expose students to as much material as possible to establish knowledge base to (1) teach students how to experience the delight and values shown in the arts and (2) to contribute to the students’ general perceptual and conceptual knowledge
• Children at this age like pictures that clear and vivid

Children between ages 5 and 7 should know the following basic art terms:

• Black
• Blue
• Bright
• Brown
• Brush
• Cardboard
• Chalk
• Circle
• Clay
• Coil
• Construction paper
• Crayon
• Bark
• Dot
• Drawing
• Easel
• Eraser
• Fingerpaint
• Glue
• Green
• Grey
• Hammer
• Ink
• Kiln
• Light
• Manila paper
• Mural
• Nail
• Newsprint paper
• Orange
• Oval
• Overlap
• Paste
• Pastel
• Pen
• Pencil
• Pink
• Pinch pot
• Purple or violet
• Rectangle
• Red
• Ruler
• Scribble
• Shape
• Square
• Stripe
• Tempera paint
• Tissue paper
• Triangle
• Watercolor
• Weaving
• White
• Yellow

Suggested Subjects or Themes for First- and Second-Graders

• Playground games
• Fun in the snow
• Fun in the fall leaves
• A flower garden with insects
• My pet and me
• Stuffed animals
• Animals in the zoo or jungle
• Farm animals
• Noah’s ark
• Kings and queens
• What I like to do when it rains
• What my parents and I like to do together
• My make-believe wish
• Skipping rope
• Our community helpers
• Butterflies in a garden
• Fish in the sea
• Land of make-believe
• My favorite toy
• Clowns

Notes on Chapter 15: A Sequential Curriculum for Kindergarten

In general, Kindergartners:

• Are interested in new things and are eager to learn, but have short attention spans and are easily fatigued. Stimulate their natural curiosity. Expose them to many manipulative materials and encourage their interest in using art materials.
• Are prolific workers for a short period of time and want to see immediate results. Break lessons into parts, but make sure each part produces a result.
• Can answer speculative questions.
• Can sing songs from memory; can chant and move rhythmically.
• May play alone or cooperatively. The typical developmental sequence is:

1. Solitary play (no awareness or interaction with another)
2. Onlooker play (near others and aware of their play, but not entering into the other's play)
3. Parallel play (independently working on a common activity)
4. Associative play (using each other's toys and asking questions)
5. Cooperative play (play using differentiated roles)

• Do group projects only when each child can do his/her individual part independently
• Learn social and interpersonal skills while playing. Teach them how to give encouragement to each other about their art
• Like to pretend and engage in make-believe stories about the characters in their pictures.
• Desire the approval of classmates and teachers. Show that you respect their art.
• Have a playful attitude. Can easily interchange between what is real and what is fantasy.
• Can imitate movements of animals. Use movement to motivate art experience.
• Delight in fantasy and imaginative games. Use psychomotor games and role-playing to stimulate art.
• Are developing awareness of their bodies. Use games to encourage children to represent body parts in their artwork.
• Can manipulate object appropriately. Teach the proper way to use a paint brush, markers, and clay, as well as how to clean a table.
• Can spend hours in sand and water play.
• Desire to discover and to test their conceptual and physical powers. Praise students when they have arrived at their "own way" of drawing something.
• Have feelings that are hurt easily. May experience a lack of confidence by determining that another child is the "class artist." Praise individual expression.
• Need outlets for wishes to dominate, destroy, or make a mess.

ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT

• Drawing development is highly variable
• Children's scribbles or presentations may include:

1. Patterns of marking in strokes
2. Patterns of dots
3. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal, circular, curved, and waving lines
4. Placement of patterns on the page, such as overall, quarter page, centered, in halves, along a diagonal axis, and following the shape of a two-cornered arch, a one-corner fan, or a two-corner pyramidal

• They begin to make geometric symbols into their artwork
• They will exaggerate the sizes of things important to them
• They will use non-realistic colors
• May develop an awareness of a ground-line

TEACHING ART

• Kindergartners require little or no motivation from a teacher to create art
• Teacher's role is to encourage and guide individual expression and to help children understand appropriate behaviors in working with art materials
• Help children to be inwardly motivated and to use personal symbols
• Avoid asking questions that may confuse some children or divert their attention
• If children run out of ideas, suggest that they review their past drawings
• While it is important not to dictate creative efforts, teacher must demonstrate how to handle art supplies, finish work appropriately, and reinforce proper classroom behaviors
• Avoid cute, follow-the-directions, gimmicky assembly projects geared to impress parents
• The younger the child, the more attention should be placed on process and less on final product
• Praise the act, not the child

Teaching Drawing-drawing clarifies, focuses, and increases children's comprehension

• Discourage erasing
• Encourage children to perceive and discover

Teaching Painting

• Use 1/2 inch brushes
• If space permits, let children sit on the floor and us 18- by 24-inch paper
• To minimize spills, paint should be the consistency of heavy cream, not water
• Teach children to tap their brushes on jars to control drips
• Use newspapers to control clean-up

Teaching Cutting, Pasting, and Collage

• Have good, working scissors for students to use
  
• Have a few pairs of left-handed scissors
• Always teach scissors-safety
• Students must be taught how much glue or paste to use and on which surfaces to apply it
• For collage, organize trays or shoeboxes of wallpaper and cloth strips, metal foils and textured papers, feathers, and yarn

Teaching Fingerpainting

• Helps children discover types of lines
• Guide children to use the edge of their hands and their palms as they paint

Teaching with Chalk

• Can be used outdoors on sidewalks or playgrounds
• Water down paper to reduce dust levels or dip into buttermilk while drawing (clean chalk on a screen or on concrete when project is done)
• Use dark colored paper for dramatic effect

Teaching Three-Dimensional Art

• Colored, scented clays may work better with Kindergartners (1 cup of salt, 2-3 cups of flour, and 1 teaspoon of salad oil. Cook in a saucepan on the stove, adding just enough water so that it releases from the sides of the pan.)
• Puppetry helps students overcome shyness and develop public speaking skills

ART CRITICISM, ART HISTORY, AND AESTHETICS

• Art criticism-art talk can deal with what we see, what it is called, how it appears, what colors, shapes, and textures it has in it, and what ideas it brings to mind
• Art history-use art representations to tell stories and let children tell stories, but be careful that children do not feel that their work is insufficient
• Aesthetics-discussions about aesthetics are not beyond kindergartners

Notes on Chapter 25: Painting

PAINTING WITH WATERCOLORS

• Watercolors are good for teaching color properties of hue, value, and intensity
• White watercolor or construction paper is recommended
  
• Use newspaper under paintings to speed up cleaning
• Round, pointed, soft-bristle, camel-hair brushed are recommended
• Watercolor boxes containing semimoist cakes should be cleaned at the end of the period, and left open to dry
• Change water containers when they become muddy
• Preliminary sketches are recommended
• Areas that are to appear white can be masked off during painting
• Students should begin with light colors and build to darker values
• Try combining with crayons or oil pastels in a resist method
• Art history examples: Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and brush paintings from China and Japan
• Consider the importance of a vibrant, fresh appearance verses a labored, fussy, muddled appearance

PAINTING WITH TEMPERA

• Use discarded baby-food jars and half-pint milk cartons as containers
• For a class of 30, prepare about 60 containers of varying colors, 6 containers of white, and 4 containers of black
• Students can help out and gain color knowledge by helping prepare the paints
• Only fill the paint container to the length of the paint brush's bristles
• If possible, a separate brush should be available for each color of paint
• After use, squeeze excess paint into containers, then place brushes in a large basin of soapy water to soak overnight, then rinse in clear water
• Encourage students to make preliminary sketches in chalk or with a brush and light-colored paint
• Minimize clean-up by using newspapers
• Encourage students to wear protective clothing
• To keep paints from running together, avoid painting next to wet areas
• Tell students to squeeze out excess water thoroughly before using brush to paint again
• Consider using tempura resist methods with older students

MURAL MAKING

• Helps students acquire art knowledge and work with others to plan and carry out a project
• For a collage pin-up mural, urge students to make large and small figures and objects, use overlapping and object groupings, and use size to create sense of distance
• For scaling up a mural, use the grid method (1 foot = 5 feet is a convenient conversion)

Notes on Chapter 26: Paper Projects in Two Dimensions

COLLAGE - derives from the French coller, meaning "to stick or to adhere"

• This technique is well suited for design using overlapping of shapes and colors, positive and negative shapes, value contrast, pattern, and texture
• Cut and arrange the large shapes in a motif first
• Overlapping of shapes is a major feature of collage making
• Guide students to use eye-catching materials (i.e. foils, cellophane, and shiny plastic) only as points of emphasis
• Encourage students to use uneven repetition
  
• Use informal (asymmetrical) balance instead of formal (symmetrical) balance
• Use discarded magazines as paste-applying surfaces

TISSUE-PAPER COLLAGE

• Adhere tissue to the background using undiluted liquid laundry starch
• Work with lighter color tissue first
• Apply a layer of starch on the background, then apply tissue, then apply another layer of starch
  

MOSAICS

• Tesserae - the little colored pieces
  
• Teaches that wholes are made of parts - important concepts in math, science, and social studies
• Examples of mosaic art: San Vitale in Rome, Gaudi's Cathedral in Barcelona, Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles, and the avenues of Rio de Janeiro
• Store tesserae by color in shoe boxes
• It is best to begin on the outer edge and work inward toward center
• Employ several values of a color in larger areas
  

Lesson Plan 1: Life-Sized Self-Portraits

Andrea Eisenberger and Joni Hough

October 6, 2009
ARTE 5121

Art/Integrated Lesson Plan: Life-Size Self-Portraits

Subject: Art & Language Arts
Grade Level: 3
NCSCOS Objective #: Art 1.06, 2.01, & 4.02; Language Arts 1.04


GOAL: The goal of this lesson is to explore language arts in the visual arts classroom by having students identify words that describe themselves and then juxtaposing those words with images to create a life-size self-portrait. This lesson gives students the opportunity to explore their identity and creative expression and helps them make the connection between what they see and what they think and/or feel.


DEVELOPMENTAL RATIONALE: At this age, students generally are becoming aware of the differences in people and can begin to understand what makes them unique. Students are also growing in critical skills, self-evaluation, and evaluation of others. This lesson will allow students to explore their emerging self-image. In the previous lesson in this unit, students created representational self-portraits using magic markers. Students studied facial proportions.


MATERIALS: Examples of self-portraits from
Picasso,













Kahlo,


















Basquiat,


















Lawrence,
















and Liao;














butcher paper, pencils, markers, paint, brushes, magazine images, glue, pastels, chalk, decorative paper, scissors, computer with a variety of fonts, etc.


Websites for self-portrait examples:
Picasso: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso/self7.jpg.html
Kahlo: http://www.paintinghere.com/UploadPic/Frida%20Kahlo/big/FridaKahlo-Self-Portrait-on-the-Border-Line-Between-Mexico-and-the-United-States-1932.jpg
Basquiat: http://rawartint.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/basquiat.jpg
Lawrence: http://culturemob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/nationalacademyjacob-lawrence-self-portrait.jpg
Kathy Liao: http://www.kathyliao.com/


INTRODUCTION/MOTIVATION:
Day 1
1. Tell students to think of the things that make you what you are: (5 min.)
-the way you look
-the music you listen to and the music you make
-the words you write and the images you create
-what you've been through and how you feel now
-where you live and where you belong
-the things you love and the things you hate
-your family and friends
-the things that make you laugh and the things that make you cry
-the places you like and the places you fear

2. Have students write down five to seven words to describe who they are. (5 min.)
3. Show/discuss examples of self-portraits from Picasso, Kahlo, Basquiat, Lawrence, and Liao. (5 min.)
4. Have students describe artists based on their self-portraits. (3 min.)


VISUALIZATION/TRANSITION:
Day 1 (cont’d)
Tell students that we will now make our on life-sized self-portraits. Show students the example that the teacher made and explain that students will be making conceptual self-portraits. Encourage students to experiment with the shapes they can make with their outline. (2 min.)



ACTIVITY:
Day 1 (cont’d)
Divide students into same-sex pairs. (2 min.)
Have students take turns tracing each other’s outline on butcher paper. (15 min.)

Day 2
Have students fill in their outlines with a variety of media. (35 min.)
Students who complete this phase quickly may move on to the next phase.

Day 3
Have students print, affix, paint and/or collage their descriptive words onto their self-portrait using at least three different types of media. (25 min.)

Have students cut out their outlines. (10 min.)


SUMMARY/CLOSING: Students will show their finished self-portraits to the class and state what five to seven adjectives they used to describe themselves. Portraits will be displayed throughout the school.


EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT:
Did student use at least five words to describe him/herself?
Did student draw a life-size self-portrait?
Did student use three different media?
Did student incorporate text in self-portrait?
Did student use time wisely/participate in class?