ART PROJECTS

Since starting my job at American Pacific International School my previous role as a general English teacher has been expanded to a Primary Grade One Educator, meaning that I'm not just teaching English subject, but am teaching core subjects like Science, Math, and Health and also extracurricular subjects like ITC and Art. The latter is a subject that has been a real pleasure to teach this year. It has been a challenge to help my students develop their creative skills, but weekly projects every Monday give students the outlet they need to help in building confidence, important life skills like focus and perseverance, it improves their motor skills, and, of course, it's lots of fun. Here are some of the projects we have completed this school year.

 





In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the excitement and anticipation for the upcoming Christmas party and concert leave students a bit hesitant to study to their full potential, but fun projects like the one seen above help students use that excitement to develop their fine motor skills. This was our first big project using paint so students learned how to hold paintbrushes and learned the proper technique to apply paint, clean the brushes, and create neat even strokes. The students really impressed me with these carefully crafted Christmas elves which decorated the halls outside our classroom. Using printed class photos certainly motivated students to produce high-quality work.

For this art project, students traced circles using cup lids then carefully painted inside and around the circled area. This was really an exercise in patience and perseverance to finish this one while maintaining clear crisp lines. I think my students did a fantastic job.

               

 

Here is one of my favorite projects we did this school year. Students created oil pastel self-portraits. We began by discussing and practicing the various ways to make facial features like eyes, lips, noses, etc. Then with a pencil, we drew our portraits on a thick (180gram) piece of black paper. Then using a liquid glue like Elmer's we retraced our lines. The following week we filled in all the gaps using oil pastels. All the black lines in the drawings are a result of the dried glue on black paper. The effect is clear lines and the oil pastels make for bright colors. 

Here is our first project using watercolors. Because this was many students first time using this medium, I decided to have the students focus less on making accurate strokes, and more on mixing and blending colors. For these pieces we used a wet on wet technique, meaning the students wet the paper on both sides to prevent the paper from curling up, then applied the wet paint, encouraging students to mix the colors on the paper. We finished by sprinkling some salt on the top. The salt absorbs the water and creates a cool snowflake effect on the surface. When the paintings are dry, just rub off the salt and voila, you get some beautiful pieces like these here.

It's also important to note that you need a high-quality paper (around 300gm) or the paint will not set as beautifully as some of these paintings did.

Here are some fun underwater scenes we did. To complete these it required us to first create a background using watercolors. To start this lesson we reviewed the color wheel, and students learned to mix colors to create intermediate colors like the ones shown here:

Now students were ready to paint their underwater background scenes. I instructed students to choose three adjacent colors on the color wheel to blend for their background. This was a struggle for many of them, but they got there in the end. The next week, we practiced drawing sea creatures before adding them to our watercolor paintings to create bright underwater scenes. The multimedia effect really makes the colors pop. I love them. Way to go grade one students!

On to our next project; scratch boards. These are not the store-bought scratchboards, but student-made. To create these scratchboards, students first covered the surface of a thick cardstock paper with oil pastels. I instructed students to use any kind of patterns or shapes that they wanted as long as the entire surface was covered. Once they are completely covered with the oil pastel, be sure to brush off any residue left over from the oil pastels, and apply an even coat of black paint. Depending on your paint you may need two or even three coats. Apply just enough coats to create a black surface. The next week, we watched a drawing tutorial on how to draw all sorts of space-related things. It was helpful for students to practice with paper and pencil first before committing to their scratchboards.