Last fall I had the privilege of doing an art history/project session with 1st graders at our local school. Since then, every time I’m at the school (as a sub, tutor, volunteer and parent), those little cuties come running toward me, squealing my name, to give me a big hug and to ask when we will do art again.
Yesterday, that time finally came. We reviewed our previous lesson about Henri Mattise, the “wild beast.” We looked through a few books about Claude Monet, focusing on his interest in how colors change throughout the day with the changing light. Then we started our own project.
This mesa, seen out the classroom window was our subject. You should have seen the kids climbing up on the couch, paper held to window, to try to get the correct shape drawn!
The students were divided into three groups: sunrise, bright daylight, and moonlight. They worked on individual drawings within their assigned groups.
This fellow quickly figured out he could blend and soften the colors laid down by chalk pastels. Others soon followed his lead…
Everyone seemed to DELIGHT in how messy their hands got…and some, like this fellow, ended up with chalk all the way up his arms and all over his desk!
We stopped to take a photo of the rainbow of messy hands…before headed to the sink to wash up. Whew! That took awhile!!
It took all of us working together to carry the long sheets of colored background paper out into the hall and staple it up to the wall.
Each student carefully carried their own pictures out to our board for me to staple the drawings on to the background we had prepared.
We finished by making three signs to explain what type of light we were mimicing: sunrise, mid-day, moonlight. Doesn’t this look AWESOME?!
Hopefully the students will remember a little bit about Claude Monet and his fascination with art. I’m certain we all had fun making messy, marvelous art!
I can’t wait for next time!
Journey2Wonderful 
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