The Brown Bag Teacher

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A Thanksgiving Directed Draw

Happy Thanksgiving break, friends! Today I’m sharing our first venture into in-class art: watercolor paintings. Enjoy the mess and adorable pictures. 🙂


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.
We started drawing using pencils. I drew on the WhiteBoard and my friends drew at their seats. We used a “Monkey See, Monkey Do” method. In terms of directions, I really just winged it. I started with a triangle for the nose and a gobbler. Then, we added a circle for the face and a body for the turkey. Next, we added feathers. As we drew together, we talked about using the WHOLE page, and going with our gut (so we did not leave too many pencil marks). After students drew their turkey, they traced their lines with black permanent marker.

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. 😉

Beware, this is a messy process and the first time it does require a solid chunk of time. We had to press pause for specials/lunch.
Overall, it was the most wonderful day. My friends absolutely loved the chance to work with watercolors, and they LOVE art. They worked so intently and quietly to get everything ‘just right’. Plus, it was a fabulous lesson in flexibility and going with the flow. 

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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  1. Michele says

    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!

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  2. Marybeth says

    I love this good old fashion directed art. Our first graders learn so many valuable skills from these lessons. Love this!

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