single lessons

learning segments

In these lessons, students explored a theme and developed multiple projects that built upon each other within the theme.

Mish-Mash Creatures: Weaving Imaginary Drawing with Observational Drawing
(5th Grade)

In this lesson, students practiced both observational drawing and drawing from imagination. Students chose up to three toy figures and created a character that combined characteristics of each toy.  Students we are asked to give these characters personas and draw their creatures into an environment. We looked at several children’s book illustrators as well as graphic novel artists to give us inspiration for our drawings.

SUMINAGASHI: The Japanese art of marbling (5th Grade)

In this project, students were introduced to the Japanese style marble printmaking technique of Suminagashi. Student’s learned what marbling was and identified examples of where we see marbling in the outside world including tree trunks, certain stones and rocks, oil spills, and more. Working in teams of three, students worked together through the steps of the Suminagashi process. At the end of class, students walked away with 3 unique Suminagashi prints.

Rumi and the Caged Bird Oil Pastel Drawing

In this lesson, I told a version of the story Rumi and the Caged Bird to a second grade class in which the caged bird was a parakeet. The following day, we recalled the story as a class and began our drawing. I led the class step by step on how to draw their parakeet; however, the children had creative control over the look of the background. Students were introduced to color mixing, scumbling, and color layering.

Character Development lesson 1

In this lesson, students created a monster character from their imagination using graphite pencils. After sketching, the students wrote about their monster with a series of prompts that discussed where their monster lives, what they eat, what their super power is (if they had one).

Character Development Lesson 2

In this lesson, students were asked to build upon their drawing that they had created in a previous class to create an environment where their monster might live out of modeling clay. Students were introduced to simple modeling and sculpting techniques including making coils, pulling, pinching, carving, and smoothing.