Middle School Christmas Ornaments in Oil Pastel - with PowerPoint and handout

This is my first year with my middle-schoolers, and I have had a rough time knowing what skills they have, and which they still really need to work on.

After our last value study project seemed like a real struggle, I thought I'd take it easy with a step-by-step guide on drawing and shading color values with Christmas ornaments.  This project is not concerned so much with the reflections of the ornaments.  We only concentrated on 3 parts: cast shadow, mid-tones, and highlight.  We also practiced building layers with our oil pastels and mixing tints and shades.  Also, I teach in a Catholic school - so Christmas ornaments are A-OKay.

I started with a handout full of stolen images from the Internet and a PowerPoint too.  We discussed the parts of light and shade that create value and the difference between grayscale and monochromatic color schemes.

The handout coincides with the slides on the PowerPoint and discusses vocabulary.
Next, I take the students step-by-step through the process of drawing and coloring and rendering their Christmas ornament in 3D. They do actually have an ornament in front of them to look at and draw.  The slides were up on the TV as the kids worked, so we mostly all stayed together, but some friends needed additional help.

      

Included in the handout is a rubric for this lesson.  Overall I am pleased with the results!  I only see my middle schoolers once a week for 45 minutes.  It was a learning process at the beginning of the year, and I felt I was never going to get through any sort of curriculum.  We've started working smaller and less independently, and that seems to work.  Here are some student works:

Free Color Wheel coloring download with lines that do not make any sense!

I do not know what I ever used this thing for, but it is kind of fun, and it is a cool free download! Knock your socks off with this crazy color wheel with lines that do not make any sense!

Warm vs. Cool Clor Dinosaur Silhouettes and Free How to Draw Dinosaurs downloads

Second grade learns about warm and cool colors by watercolor painting colorful washes.  We thoroughly discuss why colors have temperatures and why artists use these different colors to convey feelings.

Being cart based, I opted not to have second grade use watercolor for their backgrounds - rather we drew interesting line designs with crayons and filled white space up with color.  We didn't get a chance to discover new colors that happens when mixing paint, but we did get the chance to categorize our crayons by temperature.

When our pages were colored, second grade practiced drawing dinosaurs.  I had put together some packets of dinosaur pictures as well as how to draw pages.  Here are a few pages I got from Dover Publications.
How to draw a Brachiosaurus 

How to draw an Albertasaurus

How to draw a T-Rex

We next discussed our parts to composition and created a prehistoric silhouette over our crayon designs with black construction paper.

Sunshine! First grade gets us ready for warmer days ahead.

Continuing our study of Warm vs. Cool colors, first grade made these wonderful warm color sunshines.  It has made everyone at school loooong for the sunny days ahead (longest winter ever!!!) and keeps us optimistic that it will be here soon.

First graders began by drawing sunshines for 5 minutes.  They had to fill a paper and draw as many different suns as they possibly could.  Then I ask quesions like, 

"Who drew a circle with little lines?" 

"Who made one with sunglasses?" 

 "Who drew one with triangles?"

I used to ask, "Who drew one in the corner?"  but I don't do that anymore.... (It seriously encourages corner suns, I did my thesis on it!)  This conversations gets children thinking about other unique ways they could make a sunshine.

Together we looked at several examples of sculptures and paintings of sunshines.  We discuss all the elements the artist used and how each one looks different.  Finally we construct our own.

We do it together in steps;

make a circle, choose a new color for sunshine rays, choose another color for sunshine rays, use your scraps to make a face, add decorations with more construction paper, add decorations with slick paper, add decorations with metallic or glitter paper.  These took about 2 hours.  

Hot Dogs and Cool Cats! A downloadable sub lesson that worked pretty well.

I knew I was going to miss my first grade classes a few weeks back.  I needed a sub lesson that was relevant and kept my students on track with their curriculum.  We had been learning a little bit of color theory with our recent studies.  I kept that up with this Cool Cats and Hot Dogs Lesson that anyone can teach.

I found it on TeachersPayTeachers.  It is 19(!!!) pages. It is on sale for one more day.

Young artists learn color mixing and the difference between warm and cool colors. They can then make a hot dog or cool cat using warm or cool colors.

This packet contains everything you need to teach the Hot Dog and Cool Cat lesson: 

Step by step lesson. (2 pages)
Pre-assessments (1 page)
Color wheels and color lessons (3 pages)
Dog and Cat drawing sheets (6 pages)
Sheet of rubrics (1 page)
Sheet of labels (1 page)
Pages for student generated criteria for the rubric (3 pages)

It has clean cut graphics and was easy to follow.  I taught the second hour of this lesson upon my return.  Although the kids seemed to be enjoying it, it struck me as busy work, and a little too in depth.  Even for first graders.  They knew their warm and cool colors by the end of the first day, and it seemed like I just kept re-hashing the same points with a lot of worksheets.  If you need a very thorough sub plan, this is it.  AND supporting the teachers on TeachersPayTeachers is always cool.

Easy first grade color wheel coloring page: Why aren't color wheels all the same?

I teach first graders how to mix primary colors during an oil pastel project.  I have always had the students practice mixing on a scrap paper as I demo in the front of the room.  I suddenly realized that the class should be mixing on a color wheel!  In Illinois, it's not technically an assessment till fourth grade, so I never even considered it!  However; the flow of the wheel would definitely help some students understand it.  Plus, it starts to make a basic foundation and connection to many projects in the future.

Of course, 30 minutes before my class I get this grand idea.  I google "Color Wheel Coloring Page ."

  I sift through a million results and cannot find a nice basic six color - color wheel with yellow on top.  Every color wheel I have ever had hanging on my wall has yellow on top.  The concept can be confusing enough to some kids, changing the order could really mess them up!

So, I made my own.  The Color Wheel Coloring Page for primary and secondary colors only, with yellow on top, is now available for download.  Enjoy!

Color Theory Color Mixing take home worksheet

The best way to learn how to mix colors is to actually mix colors!  It may seem like artists just know instinctively how to mix, but it doesn't just come naturally.  Students who are just learning color theory and color mixing need to understand how the colors react with one another.  This Color Theory/Color Mixing take home worksheet will have kids problem solving to get the right answer.  This is a useful review for students who have already had some color mixing experience.

Color Theory Worksheet - Intermediate/Secondary

This Color Theory Worksheet is a little bit more inclusive than the worksheet I had previously posted.  This worksheet is full of color theory vocabulary words that the students would have to find the definitions for, or review and go over with you.

T-shirt Design - Color Combinations Worksheet

The T-Shirt Design Worksheet is an exercise I took directly from the book Daily Warm-ups Art Level I.  It is a fun little exercise to get students thinking about new and different color combinations - but proves to be a bit too advanced for my intermediate kids.  They could be wearing a silver, black, and orange t-shirt, but when they see that on their paper they are not impressed, and do not necessarily see the connection to their artwork.

Color Theory Worksheet

Here is a real simple color theory worksheet I use for fourth grade.  It has all the basics.  Most of the answers are found on the student color wheels I pass out, or on the bulletin boards in our classroom.  Then we go over it all together.