1st Grade Art Activities

Harvest Corn
Students talked about the first Thanksgiving between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Corn was given to the Pilgrims by the Native Americans and it was one of the first crops that the Pilgrims grew in America. The kindergarteners were shown examples of multicolored harvest corn and they described all of the colors that they saw. They practiced their cutting and gluing skills when they created their own harvest corn collages. When all the artwork is put together it becomes giant field of Kindergarten Corn! Option 2: provide template copies for students to color with harvest colors. Add green leaves and glue to stalks.

First graders created a wall of circles in the Kandinsky style. I cut 9x9 inch squares for each student. I drew basic circle shapes for them. I provided 6 colors of paint for the students. They had to choose 3 colors to complete their circles. Larger brushes worked best. I set up one painting table while the other tables finished previous week work.

Thing a jar....create your own creature

Wocket in my pocket
9x12 Construction paper
glue small square of construction paper on three sides
construct a "wocket" out of scrap colored pieces of paper

First graders: I copied a template of a basic fish shape. I used  a ruler to lightly mark off stripes about 1inch wide across the page. Students were instructed to color the stripes but break the color inside the fish with a new color. They were mounted on a colored construction paper for display.

We discussed the color wheel. During a previous lesson, we mixed white icing with the primary colors. We mixed two primary colors on wax paper to create a seconary color. We created all the colors then they were provided with vanila wafers to eat their color creations. These templates were colored in the next art period. We discussed complimentary colors on the color wheel. They colored the crayons on the left in all the primary and secondary colors - then they had to color the background in its complimentary color. The second page on the right has the color names written on each crayon. They colored accordingly. They were mounted on construction paper. On the back they colored a basic color wheel and our color wheel mouse project. Mouse project - on white paper they are are instructed to make color blobs as we discussed primary colors (a blob for each) then how we made secondary colors (a blob for each). They should have six color blobs about the shape/size of an egg. They are then instructed to transform each blob into a mouse by adding a head, 4 legs, and a tail. A tasty slice of cheese is colored in the center for them to share.