First Grade van Goghs

 

First grade has been focusing on Vincent van Gogh during the month of February. Older kids tend to remember van Gogh as "That guy who cut his ear off!", so instead, I introduced the class to his art through the book The Starry Night by Neil Waldman. We discussed the concepts of fiction (fantasy) and nonfiction (reality) and I told the kids that while Vincent van Gogh was a real artist who lived and died many years ago, this fictional story imagines what might happen if van Gogh visited New York City today. This first grade class is particularly large and loud, so instead reading the book to them, I'd made a video of it to show on the SmartBoard. Yay, technology!

Many of the kids already recognized the painting Starry Night. But before tackling our own versions, we looked at some of van Gogh's sunflower paintings. Each student drew and colored his or her own sunflower in oil pastel. I grouped them together for a colorful hallway display, an idea I'd found on Pinterest. I think it really brightened up the office hallway during this snowy, snowy month.

Following our sunflowers, we started our own night skies. Each student got a piece of blue construction paper and we talked about the horizon line - the place where the sky meets the land, and the sun comes up and goes down. The blue paper was for the sky above the horizon line. I feel it's important to stress this concept to Elementary students, to remind them that the sky isn't just a little blue strip that never touches the ground!

  

We worked with chalk pastels, which was pretty darn messy. We had several rules for how to blend and get rid of extra chalk dust without covering our desks and neighbors with it. We also worked from light to dark, starting with the whites, yellows, and oranges, and only later, trading for blues. even so, clean-up definitely took a bit longer on our chalk day.

 

The following week, each student got a sheet of black construction paper and oil pastels to draw the village. Again, we discussed the horizon line. We looked at van Gogh's original painting, and noted how his tree pokes up above it, into the sky space. We also discussed the colors used in the little village, and how those colors might be different in the daylight.

  

Once we'd drawn our villages, we cut them out as one large piece. This is another concept some kids have trouble with, but I demonstrated the difference between cutting out each individual house and tree, and cutting out the entire shape. Overall, the students did really well with this.

  

Finally, it was time to glue our villages to our night skies. I was really impressed with the many different ways the students had come up with to depict glowing stars, as well as all the activity going on in their villages. Check out the subway in the picture below!