Georgia O'Keeffe Flowers by 5th Grade

Georgia O'Keeffe flowers by 5th grade! This is my FAVORITE project to do with 5th grade every year because the results are always AMAZING! Throughout the years I have saved a million photographs of flowers. Yes, photographs from calendars, posters, magazines you name it! Students discuss what a view finder is and create their own using a piece of square scrap paper. We then move it around the page to find the best abstracted enlarged shapes and composition to draw on their page. This does get very difficult for them to comprehend at first, so it is good to practice and demonstrate with a few photograph examples. We also look at Georgia O'Keeffe's work and discuss her life, work and compositions of her pieces. Visit my Teachers Pay Teachers Store for the Resource Worksheet we used for this lesson!

Students each get a piece of 12X12"inch white drawing paper, 90lb, great for watercolor and all drawing and paint materials. They sketch with pencil and then outline with sharpie.

We used watercolor pencils, watercolor paints, liquid watercolors and watercolor crayons to complete the painting steps. We discussed layering colors and mixing colors to make new ones. Sometimes students think you can't mix watercolor paints together, it is quite interesting! You might have to demonstrate how to mix colors with the students :)

Here are some of the awesome products I used for this lesson. I hope your students love these as much as mine did!

Sargent Watercolor Crayons

Prisma Watercolor Pencils

Here are the final results!

Vocabulary: Composition, Georgia O'Keeffe, Watercolor, View Finder, Enlarge, Blending, Color Theory, Abstract, Shape

Visit this lesson using Pan Pastels at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Nutcrackers: Art Around the World, Next Stop is Germany!

This was the perfect time of year to do a lesson on the Nutcracker. With the holiday season which approached so quickly this year, and with our Art Around the World theme, exploring the history behind the nutcrackers was perfect! We discussed where the Nutcrackers originated from, who has nutcrackers at home and what they look like, in addition to the infamous Nutcracker Ballet! We listened to the amazing soundtrack of Tchaikovsky's memorable tunes and integrated such a wide variety of rich content! Don't forget to pull out the map and locate Germany on the map in comparison to The United States! This was a great lesson that the students very much enjoyed and were surprised by all the connections they made to each topic.

The History of the Nutcracker

History of The Nutcracker Ballet

2nd Graders created these nutcrackers using sharpies, pencils, crayons, and watercolor paints.

Beauty, Music, and Dance!

Storytelling through dance and the arts!