Third/Fourth/Fifth grade: Doodle Paintings

Winterlight

I've been a long time admirer of Courtney Autumn Martin's dreamy Doodle Paintings ever since I saw her drawing them during class. I thought this would be a perfect lesson for my students on encouraging them to let go of their control and "see where your pen takes you" as one of my students commented. They first painted their paper with liquid watercolor and once dried, started with a circle and went from there. This lesson was not guided and the only suggestion I made to students was to create contrast with the circles so they would pop. I love how unique each doodle is and the element of surprise from beginning to finish.  Check out Courtney Martin's Doodle Paintings here  and also check out her children's book illustrations!

Kindergarten- Fall Trees

Kindergarteners are starting off the year learning about color.  After reading them a fun book called Color Dance, students learned about primary colors and warm and cool colors (secondary colors will come later, starting off simple for now!). For the first part of the lesson, students painted circular clouds  of warm Fall colored leaves for their tree. Once that was dry, I dropped a tiny blob of ink at the bottom of their paper and they blew the ink through a straw for the trunk and spread it out into branches. It helps to tilt the paper down so the ink can flow better, and we don't want purple faced kinders! For the second class, students used cool colors to paint the sky. 

This is a favorite lesson of mine because students have so much fun mixing colors, especially seeing the water turn into a delicious "pink lemonade" or purple "Gatorade". It's a magical process. Plus, they get to blow ink through a straw and that is always a hit.