Painted Paper Chickens and Roosters

1st graders started out observing slides of chickens and roosters on the Smartboard and discussing their similarities and differences. We looked closely at works by Picasso (click here for link) and Eric Carle's Rooster's Off to See the World. Then it was time to start creating, using painted papers made earlier. I have more to say about those, but I'll save that for another day.

This was a project that students finished collaging in one 45 minute period. I had a wide variety of papers cut to appropriate sizes. I also found an old bag of craft feathers for kids to use on their birds' heads ( for a little bit of the unexpected).

I asked kids to choose a head color that was different from their body and, if they had a colored board, to choose a body color that would create contrast. Most did pretty well with that. For one class I used white board and asked  students to draw lines on their background before starting to glue.

When the children got to doing the tail feathers, I suggested that they might cut some and then trade colors with others at their table so that their tails could have variety like Eric Carle's. That went over well and the bartering began almost immediately!!

Here are some of the results ( I think I'll save some of these to put up for our Welcome Back meeting in the Auditorium in the Fall!!

We talked about how artist think about placement of color and that often a color on one side of a work balances a color somewhere else.

One think students noticed in looking at pictures of birds was that the rooster's tail feathers stood upright.

I like it when kids take their art off the page intentionally.

I think these will look pretty cute displayed on a whole wall!!