2nd Graders and Building Lines

What Building Can You Make with Lines?

2nd grade students are immersed in a unit of line. Students are learning all about different kinds of lines, different types of lines and how to use lines to create different shapes and objects. To help students understand these sizable art concepts, students looked at buildings and the straight lines used in drawing buildings. Students learned how to use rulers to help them with making their buildings. After using rulers and pencils students then went over their lines with crayon and used watercolor paints to add beautiful hues to their work. 

However, before students could start on this construction process, students had to think about what was going to happen in their building. Students asked themselves, what would people do in their buildings and what the name of building would be. Students also looked at the Empire State Building for inspiration and read the story Tar Beach by artist Faith Ringgold.

Above are pictures of the artist Faith Ringgold and her book Tar Beach.

Below are examples of amazing buildings that students created and cities they built together!

Some students even choose to add small objects into the completed city such as cars, buses, street lamps, and people. There were even a few students who added some flying super heroes into their cities!

Here are examples of the completed cities displayed around our school!

As a final piece to this project, students also filled out a written reflection. This is where students did small drawings and explained what happened in their building, what they decided to name their building and what they felt went really well in the creation of the project.

PTA Fundraiser: Original Works

Come Get Your Owls!

Come Get Your Hot Air Balloons!

It's that time of year again for Mill Brook's 3rd Annual PTA fundraiser sponsored by Original Works. Original Works is a company that takes children's artwork and reproduces it on to items that can be purchased by parents such as mugs, phone cases, or even bags. To check out Original Works you can go to: http://www.originalworks.com/.  

This year for the fundraiser 1st grade students (similar to last year) learned how to draw the Mill Brook Owl and created these beautiful owl drawings below. However, this year for materials, students used crayons for their owls and painted in their colorful sky backgrounds. 

       

         

    

   

     

 

This year, 2nd grade students created new and different hot air balloon drawings. Students examined how to break down the shapes in a hot air balloon and thought about the patterns they would draw. 2nd grade students also used crayons to color in their balloons, however there was a challenge for the colors that could be used. Previously students had been learning about different ways to group color and specifically complementary colors. So, the challenge for students was to color their hot air balloons using two complementary colors (i.e. orange and blue or green and red). After using crayons 2nd grade students also applied colorful watercolors to the background. 

    

   

  

 

 

Our Version of Kandinsky's Cirlces

A Study of 

Primary and Secondary Colors

After exploring color mixing, students at Mill Brook School then learned about two important ways to group colors: Primary and Secondary colors. During our color mixing, students found that there are three colors you can't mix yellow, red, and blue. These colors are called primary colors and when they are mixed together they create purple, green and orange which are know as secondary colors.

To help second graders better understand this concept, we looked a Wassily Kandinsky's concentric circle painting. Students observed the colors he used in his painting. 

                     

(Images above from left to right: Squares with Concentric Rings and Portrait of Wassily Kandinsky)

Then students created their own inspired painting from his work. First, we folded the paper into eight sections. Then we started making oil pastel circles using only secondary colors.

Then we filled in our white spaces in each section using only primary colors with tempera cakes. 

Here are our beautifully finished rainbow colored circles!