Busy Month! - Fun Line Names Continued

Its been a really busy month and I am finally finding time to blog a bit about what we have been up to. My first graders finished their Fun Line Names. They all turned out fantastically.

If you recall from my last post, students began by drawing their name large. We traced hard with black crayon. Then they added a variety of lines around each letter. The second week we painted our names with liquid watercolor. (In fact this is the watercolor I made from markers) I encouraged students to spread their colors into many different parts of the picture... let them flow into each other and see what happens.

 

The third week we glued our names to the center of a piece of black construction paper. It measured about an inch and a half to 2 inches wider than the white paper.

 

 

This last step was a bit tricky for some of my students so I went ahead and hole punched a series of holes around the edge (before I met with students) and from there they sewed color yarn through each hole occasionally adding a bead or a piece of patterned wall paper scrap. I mentioned that this was the "final line" we would be using to complete their work.

 

 

 

I loved the results from this project and it was really a great success for everyone. However let me emphasize that there is a LOT of prep work for this project. I found myself cutting lengths of yarn over my weekend to make sure I had enough for over 100 first graders. I think the results were worth it.

 

This project took 3 forty minute classes to complete. Sometimes you may need an additional week.

Materials:

6 x 15" white paper

10 x 18" black paper

black crayons

color crayons

glue

hole punchers

yarn in various colors

beads

pieces of random interesting paper

liquid watercolor and paint brushes

 

An Ode to Tempera Cake Paints

Oh tempera cakes, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.. 1. You are easy to use, 2. You are easy to clean up, and 3. You look brilliant on white paper.

I love when new tempera cakes arrive. Their round little disc shapes fit perfectly into all sorts of fun containers. I prefer a chip dip tray that can be found at dollar stores. I know of others who use small metal containers like tuna fish cans.

This week I'm reviewing lines with my kindergarteners. We discussed and drew all sorts of lines last week, but that bored them to tears. To keep things exciting, three weeks into school I went out on a limb and did something rather scary. We painted!!
I decided to use lines, specifically curved lines, for our rainbow paintings.

First, we drew with crayon the curved lines for our rainbow so that we would have the right guide. We used Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Purple crayons in any order I felt like. Everything is up for interpretation! 

Then we painted over each line one at a time with the corresponding color paint. We start with yellow and progressively go through darker and darker colors. (This keeps my paints clean)

I think these turned out lovely. Not too shabby for three weeks in and our first time painting.

Disclaimer: I prefer the Richeson brand of tempera cake. I've used others that do not have as beautiful results. Beware cakes that are soft... they get gooey when a wet brush touches them and that's a whole other mess to deal with.
One problem have with tempera cakes are that they can be brittle. Beware the children that like to hammer their paint brushes into the cakes.