Lesson Plan: Chalk Self Portrait

This lesson is great because I truly think it can work for any age level. I taught this exact same lesson with 1st grade:

And 6th grade!

Here is the lesson plan:

Procedures:

1) Use powerpoint to teach students about portraits. (I taught them about da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. I also talked about Van Gogh's self portraits)

2)Have students do a quick "pre"test by drawing a self portrait with NO help.

3)After the pretest, I taught the students about symmetry, facial proportions, emotions, and so forth. Then they drew themselves again!

4)After all this practice, students used a regular pencil to draw on black paper. 

5)Students used a glue bottle to trace over their lines.

6)The next class, the glue was dry and students used chalk to color in their self protrait!

Materials:

Black Paper 12x18

Pastels

White Glue Bottles 

Mirrors (from the dollar store!)

Skills Learned:

-Van Gogh and Da Vinci Facts

-How to draw self portraits

-Chalk pastel exploration

Reflection:
As I hinted in the beginning, I taught this lesson several times. In fact I also taught it to Pre-K! Their self portaits are below. Probably didn't work the best with them. But 1st and 6th, it worked really well. Using the chalk was great, because students really had to mix it to get the correct skin color. And there is something so fun about coloring with your fingers! I will use this lesson again and again!

Lesson Plan: Van Gogh Pastel Vases

Well we can cut the procedures in half here, because you already know how I begin this lesson. If you don't, see the blog post right before this one!

Procedures:

 1) Students fill the entire 12 x 18 black paper with a pencil drawing of a flower and vase. We talked about adding patterns to the vase.

2) Students use a white glue bottle to trace the lines of their vase. 

3)Once the glue has dried, students chalk their vase with chalk pastel.

4) Teacher spends hours spraying fixative on the artwork :)

 Materials:

-12 x 18 Black construction paper

-Pencil

-Glue Bottle

-Chalk Pastel

Skills Learned:

-Van Gogh Facts

-How to draw flowers

-Patterns on the vase (should be review by this point)

-Chalk pastel exploration

Reflection:

I used this lesson for 2nd and 3rd grade, both did a great job on it. I was worried the boys wouldn't go for flowers but I had no complaints! I tried this with K, and I did the glue step for them, but the results just were not strong. They couldn't handle the idea of coloring on black paper as well.  If you are wondering about glue, I did this "glue lines" with every grade level from 1-6th and there were no glue wars, explosions, deaths, or anything bad. I guess sometimes if you give a student a big responsibility they CAN rise to the challenge! A big tip #3 for new teachers: Do not procrastinate on fixative. Always spray the same day they complete the project if you can. Just trust me!