Time: 6-8 weeks
Ideas for arts expressions come from many different sources such as the imagination, the environment, other art works, and personal experiences. In this unit, grade 1 students learn about the various ways that an artist gets an idea and makes that idea personally meaningful. Students use their own feelings and observations as starting points for arts expressions. Although the students focus on feelings and observation in this unit, ideas for expressions need not be limited to these two sources in other units during the year.
Sample Topic: "Colours and Feelings"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
This mini-unit is based on the idea that students and artists can get ideas for arts expressions from the way they feel. Help students explore relationships between feelings and the use of colours in art works.
Introduce or review primary colours.
Have colour days, where students wear something red, yellow, or blue to school.
Experiment with mixing the three primary colours using paint or food colouring. Let the three primary colours run together on wet paper towelling.
Make a simple colour wheel.
2. Main Activities
Ask the students to identify various feelings or moods (e.g., anger, happiness, tiredness, calmness). Show them pictures of people and ask them to identify the moods reflected. (Remember, not all students will give the same answers.) Ask the students to choose clothing colour for the people in the pictures. For example, if a person looks angry to a student, ask the student to choose the colour he or she thinks that person should be wearing.
Read Dr. Seuss's book My Many Colored Days or view the video. Ask the students to remember their mood when they woke up that morning. Ask them if they can pick a colour to show that mood. Ask them to paint a picture using that colour to show the mood. What kinds of lines will they use? Shapes?
Have students look at the colours in their school. Why do they think the school was painted the colours it is? What kind of feelings do the colours suggest? Ask them what colours they would choose for various rooms in the school. Remind them to think of the mood or feeling of the room. Have them do “colour paintings” for various rooms in their school (e.g., the classroom, the gym, the entrance hallway, and the library). Different students could do different rooms.
Look at paintings that seem to express moods or feelings through their use of colour. Direct student discussion of the paintings using a process from Responding to Arts Expressions, provided in this curriculum.
3. Concluding Activities
Display the students' “colour paintings” in the classroom or hallway. Discuss as a group how the various paintings make the students feel.
Teacher Note:
Set an environment where students feel comfortable with differing opinions, as response to colour is subjective and depends greatly on personal experience.
Sample Topic: "Vehicles"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
This mini-unit is based on the idea that students and artists can get ideas for arts expressions from things they see around them. Encourage students to observe and to understand that people learn to draw accurately by observing.
Have students collect pictures of different kinds of vehicles. Make a poster.
Have them bring toy vehicles from home. Look at the toys for lines, colours, textures, shapes, form.
Create vehicle displays.
Read poems and stories about vehicles.
2. Main Activities
Look at many toy vehicles. What makes them different from one another? Look at the different shapes. Why are rockets and jets pointed? Why do car windshields slant toward the back? Why are vehicles smooth and not jagged or rough-surfaced?
Visit a car dealership.
Look at car parts.
Make collage vehicles on paper using material, paper, string, cellophane, acetate, tinfoil, and a variety of other materials.
Learn about animal camouflage. Imagine what kind of vehicle would be good for a zebra, a house cat, or a lizard. Have students select their own animal. Observe carefully the animal selected (directly, if possible; otherwise, in photographs and videos). Paint a car in which that animal would be camouflaged – a zebra car, a cat car, or a lizard car.
3. Concluding Activities
Arrange a display of pictures and models of old-fashioned and futuristic vehicles. Discuss as a group the students' observations.
Teacher Note:
There is not enough time to complete all of the activities described in the Starter List of Activities. Teachers need to choose from the list or design other activities to meet the objectives of the curriculum and their students' needs and interests.