First Class of O'Keeffe Flowers

I was very excited for today's 4th grade arts and crafts class. 

I'm not formally trained in the arts but am very willing to learn in order to bring variety to my craft oriented class. Today I was originally scheduled to teach the 4th grade class, however, due to the art teacher chaperoning the junior high for their Academic day, I also taught this same lesson to the 3rd grade.

As I stated, I'm not formally trained but thanks to Pinterest art resources are readily available. At the website The Art of Education, I found this free lesson plan which focuses on getting students to draw big referencing the works of Georgia O'Keeffe. The lesson plan provides the materials needed, step by step instructions and some sample pictures of projects completed by students. 

Yesterday, I started prepping by cutting sheets of 9 x 13 watercolor paper into 9 x 9 inch squares. The left over strip I cut it into 4 x 4 squares that I would have the students use for drawing "test" flowers. I also took the time to make some of my own sample flowers to share with the them. I figured this would give them more options helping them to be creative while making their own flowers. 

This morning I took a trip to my local library in order to take out a few books on Georgia O'Keeffe so I could show the students samples of her work. Sadly, our local library was not very well equipped with books on the arts. I did find this one book on Georgia O'Keeffe in the children's section of the library. Thankfully it did have a few of her flower pieces. 

Because of the library's limited resources on the artist and her work, I also looked for books showcasing flowers in great detail. Fortunately, I was able to find this one book in the "flower/plant life" section of the library.

I started the class by telling the students a little bit about Georgia O'Keeffe and then showed a few of her works. I explained that our project would be to produce a flower that would take up the majority or entire 9 x 9 piece of paper and that they would be able to watercolor paint their flowers. At the mention of "watercolor", the students grew more excited. I showed them the sample flowers I made along with possible flower suggestions from the library book and that was enough, they were off creating. Of course, I didn't let them start on the 9 x 9 paper. Each student drew a sample of the flower they would create on a piece of the 4 x 4 scrap paper. This way they would get a feeling of how it felt to draw their flower and have a point of reference when they went to their final piece. Once all the students completed their "test" sample, I took one and showed them how this specific flower would translate when drawn bigger on the 9 x 9 paper. I think this step really helped them visualize how they needed to magnify their flowers for the final projects. 

As you can see, most of the students finished the pencil drawing of their flower and over half of them moved on to the next step of tracing their pencil lines with black Sharpie.
Our next class they'll finish the outlining and move on to the painting portion of the project. With how excited the 4th grade class was with this project, I have a feeling they will complete these during our next class period. When completed, their creations will be displayed in the hallway for a few weeks.

The 3rd grade also did well on this project with most of them getting to the outlining stage too. 

What a great class today!!
As always, thanks for stopping by!