It terms of supplies, there is a considerable initial cost to art in the classroom.If you don’t have classroom money left or personal funds to use, consider posting an arts-based project on Donors Choose! Under the influence and direction of Katie King (Queen of the First Grade Jungle) I ordered a class set of Prang Watercolors and 80 pound paper from DickBlick using a 25% off coupon. I also snagged black permanent markers
and individual water bowls
from Amazon under the direction of The Wonder Teacher.
After tracing our work, we started painting. Using The Wonder Teacher’s terminology, we talked about making our paints really juicy with water. This was a HUGE learning curve for my students as their tendency was to dig in the paint and not add enough water. We chanted, “Swirl, swirl, swirl in the water. Puddle in the paint.” a lot. 😉
It was such a successful and fun venture. If you have the funding and opportunity, give art a chance. With our first watercolor-experience, it was skill-based (learning how to watercolor). Moving forward, I’m looking forward to integrating art into our reading curriculum, especially as we start our research unit. So, get together your art supplies and stay tuned! 🙂
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Love this and will ‘steal’ for our two fun days (by proclamation of our principal) this coming week! I’ve been doing Friday Fun painting with my Kindergarteners this year, and they absolutely adore it. They’re learning so many soft skills–cooperation, personal space, cleanup, along with painting. I’ve been using tempura or watercolors, and each week we do an activity based on the Alphafriend of the week or our big book read-aloud (we use the reading series Journeys at our school). I love seeing students look forward to our painting, and I have that as one of our reading centers on Fridays. I have 4-6 students at a time, standing side by side at my long counter, which also has lineoleum floor in front of it, unlike the rest of our classroom which has carpet. Two weeks go we did a directed drawing for the book, “Mouse Shapes,” and we also did pencil, but then we used black crayon, before we did watercolors. They’re going to love this directed drawing of a turkey–thanks so much!
I love this good old fashion directed art. Our first graders learn so many valuable skills from these lessons. Love this!