I first saw this lesson on Splats, Scraps, and Glue Blobs by Theresa Gillespie two years ago and loved it! I had one of those moments where you just want to shove everything aside and start on the new project right away.
The first time I did it with first graders, it was near the end of the year and it was a bright colorful way to wrap the year up. This time I wanted to dive a little deeper so I chose second grade this year.
My second graders are the only grade this year that repeats an enrichment each week. That means I see one class twice a week each nine weeks. We get twice as many projects completed as the other grades because of this and so we get to cover a lot more material!
We started by discussing how artists portray emotions and reviewed some images in How Artists See Feelings by Colleen Carroll. I picked that book up last spring at NAEA NOLA and love it!
Then I pulled up the image of Paul Klee’s Senecio. After studying the painting for a few minutes we got to work making our emotion filled cats and dogs.
I let the students begin by tracing a circle for the head. They add the body and ears next. I show a few different examples for the details inside the cats and dogs and then they get to work.
The first few classes stuck to warm and cool color schemes but as the week went on some got a little more adventurous. Once they were finished coloring they painted the background using tempera cakes.
