Let’s Open a Bag o’ Crazy!

After attending the Art of Ed online conference, I was again inspired to step out of my comfort zone and let the kids go crazy, making some Valentines.  I have always loved the IDEA of putting out a bunch of stuff and letting the kids just have a ball with it in their own, different, personalized ways.  But in real life, I am not entertaining 12-14 perfect angels in my own classroom with an endless (or even reasonable) amount of time to play.  In REAL life, I am educating 18-21 sweet and well-meaning first graders in 40 minutes on a cart.  I have to get things set up and then cleaned up and put away within those 40 minutes because I have another class waiting on me up two flights of stairs.  The stairs are not the problem.  And I can be the most prepared and organized person in the world but I will never be a magic genie that can wiggle my nose and make everything clean and tidy (no matter how many times or how hard I’ve tried!!!)

With that said, I attempted this last week.  It was crazy but great!  I couldn’t have asked for a better, more patient set of students.  Some of them didn’t even get to touch paint until 5 minutes before I had to start cleaning up.  But no one complained and they were all pleased with their artwork.  It was so bright and colorful and heartfelt, you just have to love it.  It made them feel like real artists and that is what I strive for in EVERY class.

So, here’s to choice-based art and dirty tables…

Caged Primary Birds

“Three little birds
sat on my window
and they told me I don’t have to worry…”
~Corrine Bailey Rae

I found this project awhile back over at The Clever Feather.
First graders started on these super cute little bird cages today and they are loving it! We reviewed what our primary colors are and how we mixed them to get the secondary colors.
I had them trim off the top of the the paper to make the cage shape and then we started drawing the birds with sharpie. We colored out birds with the primary colors and then colored the background with a color we had not used yet. I passed out little pieces of tissue paper to make a wing for each bird. Next week we will add the cages and finish coloring.

Come back and check us out the next week!

Update: here are some of the finished birdcages. Looking back, I think it would be good to make this project a color mixing lesson. Primary colors were too simple for first grade. There was plenty of room to put more birds in most of their cages so I would have them draw three birds on each perch, two primary birds and the secondary color that the primaries make. Ah, reflection. 🙂