Painting Spring

Allow students opportunity to be budding artists by painting flowers.

Learning to draw means learning to see! Painting flowers is a fantastic way to give students opportunity to create by looking at, thinking about, and discovering.  It is the perfect way to help students see that nature is made from a vast amount of shapes, colors, and textures.

I begin my flower painting lesson by showing my students examples of great artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gough. It is very powerful to show their work of art side-by-side to the real object; in this case a flower.

After a mini-lesson looking closely at the shapes we can use to draw a flower and experimenting with some lines and shapes on doodle paper, it is time to fill the art center with the proper tools to inspire art.

I hang real photos of flowers, paintings of flowers, and place several bouquets of real flowers in the area. Because my job from this point on is to simply provide inspiration, I have now set the stage.

I am always sure to stock the art area with paints, brushes, pastels, kwiksticks, chalk, crayons, pencils, materials for collage such as tissue paper, pom-poms, etc. With this well-stocked supply of art materials and the inspiration of paintings, photos, and relia, the students are always eager to create their masterpiece.

One important step of inspiring young artists is to treat their art with the professionalism it deserves. Make sure their work is signed and displayed!

Georgia O'Keefe? No just a kindergartner in action.

This is a display of giant flowers made in the art room under the guidance of "Art Coach."


Here are two of my favorite thematic units to guide your cross-curricular teaching. Click on the picture to read the contents. Also available at TPT.

Spring Thematic Unit
$8.00

Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!

Product Description

This Spring Activities packet is filled with authentic active learning activities that will thrill your classroom or homeschool students as they learn important academic skills.

It's a Spring Thing is strategically linked to the common core standards, based on proven reading, math, and science research and best practices.

The activities are divided into areas of literature, music, art, literacy, math, science, creative writing, word wall, and guided reading. The activities are clearly written, differentiated, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. When laminated and filed, these become Ready to Go for your teaching years ahead!

Contents Include: 

Literacy Games

  • Lambs & Lions: Naming Letters Quickly

  • Lambs & Lions: Sight Word Fluency

  • Let’s Go Fly a Kite: Alphabet Fluency

  • Let’s Go Fly a Kite: Sight Word Fluency

  • The Bird’s Nest: Building Familiarity With Punctuation Marks

  • Abracadabra: Decoding CVC Words (Or Nonsense Words)

  • Hens and Chicks: Reading Reading CVC Words

  • Spring Words Worksheet: Distinguishing Between Similar Words

Math Games:

  • April Showers Bring May Flowers: Decomposing Numbers 

  • Fly Away Birdie: Solving Subtraction Problems

  • Spring Fling: Solving Addition Problems

  • Runaway Chicks: Solving Mathematical Problems Using 5-Frames

  • Bountiful Bunnies: Decomposing Numbers

  • Who Is Ready For Spring?: Connecting Numbers 1-43

  • Hippity Hop: Connecting Numbers 1-47

Songs and Fingerplays

  • It is Springtime

  • Springtime

  • March Wind

  • Put Up Your Umbrella

Science Projects

  • Jello Mixing: Mixing Colors Tactilely

  • Color Mixing: Making Secondary Colors

  • Paint Mixing: Recording Data From an Experiment

Art Projects

  • Lamb & Lion: Portfolio Sample

  • Under the Umbrella: Portfolio Sample

  • Vase of Flowers: Artist Study

  • Easter Bunny Hat

Writing

What I Like About Spring

The Easter Bunny

Guided Reading Books

Mix It Up

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Pond Thematic Unit

Pond Independent Writing Center Activities

Spring Themed Guided Readers

Spring Themed Intervention Games

Lamb and Lion Spring Themed Activities

Plants Unit: Thematic Essentials
$8.00

Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!

Product Description

Strategically Linked to the common core, this best-selling Thematic plant unit is divided into areas of literature, media, music, art, literacy activities, math activities, worksheets, science activities, creative writing, word wall words, and guided reading for cross-curricular learning.

The activities are clearly written, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. The lessons are fun and engaging and will leave your classroom or homeschool students begging for more.

Math Center Activities

Flowering Math: Joining Sets

Watermelon War: Comparing Numerals

Garden Party: Demonstrating Subtraction 

Counting Seeds: Count out items to match a given number.

Planting Seeds: Making Combinations to 10 

Adding Flowers

Garden Takeaway

Plant a Garden Ways to Make 8

Reading Center Activities:

Flower Garden: Reading Sight Word & CVC Word Sentences (or alphabet recognition).

Tip Toe Through the Tulips: Alphabet letter sound fluency (or sight word fluency)

Run Rabbit Run: Alphabet Letter Fluency

In the Garden: Naming Sight Words

Greenhouse Words: Reading Sight Words

Blooming Words: Isolating Phonemes & Writing CVC Words From Dictation

The Garden Show: Writing Color Words

Science Activities

Building a Science Center

A Seed Grows: Planting a seed in a bag

Kitchen Science: Edible Dirt

Plant Parts: Observation of Plants

The Thirsty Stem: Capillary Action In Plants

Seed Sorting: Using the Scientific Process

Art Projects

Plant Parts: Portfolio Sample

Artful Flowers

Mother's Day Flower

Fingerprint Flowers

Songs

Watermelon Pie 

Inch by Inch (adapted) by David Mallet

Plant A Seed

Guided Reading

The Little Seed

Writing

Plant Word Wall Words

Prompts: All About Seeds,What I Know About Plants

I Can Writing: Label it, list it card it

Pond Thematic Unit

Pond Independent Writing Center Activities

Spring Themed Guided Readers

Spring Themed Intervention Games

Lamb and Lion Spring Themed Activities

Each activity is clearly written, easy to use, and needs limited preparation. The lessons are fun and engaging and will leave your students begging for more!

 

 

Kathy Crane