This 4th grade drawing project introduces students to similarities between Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings and electron microscope photography of insects. By focusing on enlarged sections of an insect, students learn some basic drawing techniques used by illustrators and other artists. In addition to learning the approach of drawing the negative spaces first, then focusing on large shapes before small details, students also practice shading with a full range of value.

  

4th grade students began the year with a calligraphic painting lesson based on similar painting examples by Katsushika Hokusai. Students painted 'giant' garden plants common in the "Land of the Midnight Sun" where the almost 24 hours of sunlight influence plant growth. After painting a whopper of a plant, students then created a whopper of a story by transforming their painting with simple stick figure drawings that further emphasized the size of the garden plant.

Elementary Art-Kindergarten: Joan Miro is the artist inspiration for this lesson. A painting generated by the imagination is the end product. Students start their imagination paintings with a curving, crossing line that ends at the beginning. A new concept of shapes that have no name (different from circles, squares, triangles, etc.), and how to identify a shape is introduced. Students also learn that red, blue and yellow are primary colors, and thus very important for their ability to create other colors.

Elementary-Kindergarten Busy Bees Art Project: We practiced curving lines (vs. straight or zigzag), painting with a variety of tools such as a fork, sponges, thumbs and a paint brush. Overlapping shapes, counting to five (for the little bees) and the role of bees as pollinators, were also part of this lesson.