The Blues

This project is from February for Black History Month.  I feel like I never get caught up with everything.  Anyway, for this project I play some blues music and have the 2nd graders identify the instruments.  We talk about the beat and what feelings we get from this type of music.  We than talk about how many different blue colors there are.  Students realize there are infinite possibilities.  They divide there paper up into squares/rectangles and are given watercolor paints to make as many blues as they can.  This becomes the background for our pictures.  I have templates they can choose from to use for their foreground which they trace, color and cut out.  The following week we put these on with 3-DO's.  While they are creating I read the book A Blue So Blue, by Jean Francois Dumont.  Has beautiful illustrations and a cute storyline.  

Black History Month Bulletin Boards

Lois Mailou Jones

This lesson plan is from Kathy Barbro at http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/

These masks were done by my 4th graders.

 The kente cloth I came up with last year.  I take a piece of  9x12 construction paper and fold it twice vertically to create three columns.  The students look at kente cloth pictures and imitate the patterns to create their own.  The African dancers are also from Kathy Barbro.

2nd Grade Kente Cloth

In January I start art projects for Black History Month.  Today my 2nd graders were introduced to kente cloth from Ghana.  After viewing some of the cloth, they created their own with oil pastels and construction paper.  We talked about the importance of color and pattern in our designs.