Drawing Pets

As mentioned in a previous post, I brought in table top pets into my classroom. All of the students K-5 did some drawing with the pet project.  K, 1's and 4th grade did a day of observation drawing, a one day lesson. 2, 3, and 5th grade had a continuing lesson started with this day of drawing.

These two are examples of kindergarten drawings, but I will say these are some higher skilled artist.  I have been giving a ton of choice this year with my younger kids.  It has been great.  The kids are loving the stations and choice of my class.  I was feeling quite secure with the decision of a modified choice classroom until I asked the K's to draw animals.   Many of the kids were confused on what to do.  I said, look at the animals and draw them.  They didn't know how.  By this time of the year, in years past, students have been taught how to look at an object and break it down to shapes.  These kids didn't know how to do that.  I felt like a failure.  

Lucky for me I teach 5 kindergarten sections.  The next day I had the students draw with me.  I found this to be more successful.  I stressed the fact that 'If you know how to draw these animals, go ahead and draw them on your own. But if you want help, you can follow along with me.'  Modeling for the students was more successful.  I still had a handful of students who drew it the way they wanted to, but more hessitant students used my prompts to learn how to look for shapes in an object.

Older students really started finding the details in their drawings.  I love this bearded dragon. All the texture was highlighted on this drawing! 

Below is a 2nd grader drawings. I'm so in love with being an art teacher.  One of my favorite things is watch the developmental growth of fine motor skills and drawing representation. 

4th grade made... well what else... Artist Trading Cards.  I encouraged these kiddos to create the animals realistically or in another style, maybe more of a cartoonish style. 

The 5th grade made some characters for Stop Motion Animation.  There will be much more on this in the next couple of weeks. 

All classes reflected about the drawings and the experience. In some classes I had time to do a gallery walk as you see below, in others we just had time to talk about the experience. Out of 750 kids in the school, 750 kids voted we should do this again.  The plan is next year (2017) in the spring... when it's a little warmer.