Sunday, October 21, 2012

1st Grade Emotion Paintings

This was one of my student teacher's 1st grade lessons. She had the class discuss Munch's The Scream, specifically how the artist conveyed emotion. She talked about how the compositional choices contributed to the off balance/weird/maybe lonely feeling. I found a set of old photographs of kids exhibiting different emotions and she used them to help the 1st graders brainstorm different emotions. Next, the students divided their practice paper into 4 sections and drew a really small, simple face in each section to represent the emotions sad, happy, mad, and excited. (We thought those would be the 4 simplest emotions for 1st graders.) The faces helped the students remember which section was which so they could draw lines to represent each emotion. Next, they talked about how colors can show emotion. The students got their "real" piece of paper and chose an emotion to focus on. We had them draw a face to represent their chosen emotion next to their name on the back so they wouldn't forget or change their minds halfway through. With remaining time, the students used crayons to draw lines on the front to represent their emotion.
In the second class period, we sorted the students based on what emotion they wanted to paint and put them at tables with colors of tempera paint for the emotion they chose. The students created nonobjective paintings striving to convey the emotion they chose.

I almost forgot! We tried to incorporate a little Whole Brain Teaching. As the students said each part of 
"Edvard Munch", we had them place one hand on their cheek so that when the whole name was out, they were posed like the person in the Scream!


  1. Wow! 1st grade?! I'm impressed! These paintings are excellent portrayals of their chosen emotions! Your student teacher did an awesome job instructing the kids on how to show their emotions through their art! :)

  2. The happy ones really made me feel happy! What a great job!