Season-ings
Students will play matching games about the seasons of the year, take a nature walk, and create a class painting of trees using Pissarro’s painting as inspiration.
Students will play matching games about the seasons of the year, take a nature walk, and create a class painting of trees using Pissarro’s painting as inspiration.
Students will observe Blue Water and identify the various shapes and forms in the painting by putting together a puzzle of the object. They will then experiment with various other materials to gain a better understanding of how parts can come together to create whole images and structures.
This lesson asks students to mimic some of the processes that Sam Gilliam used to construct his painting Abacus Sliding. They will experiment with paints and unusual painting tools in an effort to understand how Gilliam achieved some of the artistic effects in the painting.
In this lesson children will have an opportunity to linger outside and watch the clouds go by. They will then use shaving and/or whipped cream to shape and sculpt the clouds that floated by, paints to explore the color of the sky, and movement to feel like a cloud. Children will compare these experiences to the clouds and sky in By June the Light Begins to Breathe.
Students will focus on the clothing of the vaqueros in Walker’s painting and explore the connections between fashion and function. Students will also design and draw their own pieces of clothing that combine fashion with an unusual function.
Children will explore and carefully examine Wilson Hurley’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by imagining different animals moving around the painting. They will also think about and experiment with the sound of water, inspired by the waterfall portrayed in the painting.
Students will look at William R. Leigh’s painting Greased Lightning and imagine stories that explain what might have startled the horse, then they will have the chance to act out their imagined stories.
In this lesson students will work with tangram shapes and learn to spot the shapes in Elizabeth Hopkins’s Album Quilt. After reading the book Eight Hands Round by Ann Whitford, children will have the opportunity to create their own quilt squares with tangram shapes.
After looking closely at Greased Lightning, students will examine the unusual angle the artist chose. They will explore other images of horses and then try their hand at drawing what Leigh’s scene would look like from the opposite side.
Using Elizabeth Hopkins’s Album Quilt as inspiration, students will create an album quilt of their own that tells their life story in images and patterns. They will read Quilters, a play that was written and produced in Denver, and write a creative piece that connects their experience with literature.
Students will enjoy moving like the birds in Blumenschein’s painting Mountain Lake (Eagle Nest). They will then use their powers of observation to learn what water looks like when it’s still versus when it’s moving and apply what they learn when examining the lake in the painting.