Student Art: Overlapping

Sometimes I'm at school until 6:00 or later, but I still can't help feeling like I'm the luckiest teacher alive!... fortunate... blessed. Whatever you want to call this feeling, I am happy in my classroom, with or without the students. I stay late some days because I'm hanging up the students' work. It's my gift back to the school.

The above photo shows the second Fall Trees display I've hung in a week... this one is missing the apple pictures. The paintings and drawings were done by kindergarteners (the single tree) and second graders (three trees reflection). This display I hung right outside my classroom... I had been returning the work to the teachers when the students finished their art. Then I started thinking, I should have something to show what's going on in my room out in the hall. I never get tired of looking at their work!

Third graders have just completed a project featuring a new skill and concept they've been learning: overlapping. This is their introduction to the idea of how and why artists use overlapping. In this lesson, they learned how to show overlapping. They were given nearly free choice regarding the colors they chose to color their picture. Most of them chose to use bold broad tip markers. I taught them how to make the strokes with the marker so their lines would be smooth. They used common household plastic lids (and other 'circle makers' that I've been saving just for this purpose) to make circles of various sizes.

The most difficult skill these third graders had to learn was drawing a straight line with the ruler. At the introduction to the project, I asked them how many knew how to draw a straight line with a ruler. Nearly all raised their hand. When it came time to draw the lines, I discovered that maybe a handful could indeed wield the ruler and pencil properly. It's a lot more difficult than you'd think, and for a third grader, it was definitely a skill they honed while drawing their lines. They are developing and strengthening fine motor skills with this one!

This student got around the ruler problem by not drawing so many straight lines. Clever little kid!

When you see the results, you'll see why I wanted to hang these in the first grade hallway... that's where my class is. I want to see the paintings and drawings when I walk down my hall... I'm not going to be greedy! There are five third grade classes... I just want the work of one of them near my room.



The colors are unretouched... I took the pictures with no flash... see how bright they are! Our next project is to make 3D glasses. Nothing gets their attention and makes them go "WOW!" like seeing their own work with 3-D glasses... each will make their own pair. I got the idea at last month's art teacher meeting.

This one above truly captures my interest. The student actually did not follow the rules I gave at the outset of the assignment, but look how balanced it all is. She demonstrates overlapping, but adds her own sense of line and color. I didn't make her do it over... she proves she understands overlapping. It looks great. This is natural talent sprouting in my room! I'm just providing the tools, a little motivation, and teaching the skills... and the rest comes from them.

Below is the display in its entirety. It looks so good, I'm thinking of staying late again tomorrow night to hang another!

Apples for the Teacher

Apples! Everywhere there are apples in the first grade hallway. The first graders have been eating apples, applesauce, and apple pie, writing about apples, what they look like, feel like, and taste like, and reading about apples. Their favorite story is about Johnny Appleseed. Do you remember when you were their age and first heard the story of Johnny Appleseed?

In my classroom, they drew an apple in oil pastel. I showed them two red apples the first day... one was real and one was a fake I bought from Wal-Mart... have you seen fake fruit lately? It's amazingly real looking. The kids could hardly tell them apart... I could hardly tell them apart. We looked at the shape of the apple, the color variations in the skin, the placement of the stem, and the little shiny spot where the light reflected.

It took them about four 30 minute sessions to get from start (put your name at the bottom of the paper, now flip your paper over so you don't see your name... etc) to finish (we talked about the qualities of their drawing, about how they blended blue and white in the background). We discussed colors of apples, how they are not all red, and not all shaped the same. For the purpose of the lesson, we all drew the same apple.

The vigorous manner in which first graders color lends itself easily to the smooth rich color of oil pastels. The result of all their 'scribbles' in the background, which I encouraged, is an impressionistic style of painting. The kids don't know that yet, but their parents will appreciate it. The main focus was that they learned how to blend two colors with oil pastels by laying down a dark hue (blue) and applying white on top. They are beautiful to see as I walk down the hall.

Thinking about those first graders drawing this apple, now that I'm sitting at home in a quiet, relaxed environment without the distractions of managing a classroom, is quite different than what I was thinking about them as we drew the apple in that classroom environment I was managing. (I'm chuckling as I write that.)



Before I started teaching art (this is my second year), I pictured my classroom as being a peaceful refuge where students would fearlessly explore their creative urges, yet where they would sit attentively, listening to every direction and instruction I give them. Not only listening, but in this fantasy, they actually followed up and did what I asked them to do, in the order it was given. Yes, it's a fantasy that I strive to realize every day.


Yet, when the lesson is over, their work is done, and the teacher hangs it on the wall, I stand back and admire what they did... and I remember individual students, how one broke his oil pastels on purpose one day and I had to send him back to his classroom... how one girl was more interested in tipping her desk over, and another who thought she was finished coloring and started playing, and knocked her oil pastels to the floor. I recall stepping on oil pastels after I distinctly remember telling them to check the floor for pastels on the floor near their desks and chairs.

As the recollections pass before me, I also remember a student saying in surprise "Look! White and blue makes light blue, Mrs. Gilmore!" and another saying to a pal "Your apple looks beautiful, Shana." My mind preserves them all, like mini video clips... kids bent over their drawings so intently coloring that they don't realize I'm standing in front of them watching; the image of them as they walk into the classroom and see their papers and bags of oil pastels sitting on their tables... music playing somewhere in the background. The looks on their faces... a generous gift ... parents and friends have wanted to be a fly on the wall to see those faces.


Teachers, once in awhile, get to be flies on the wall... I count my blessings every day.

I dedicate this entry to teachers all over the world, in all types of classrooms.