Shape Castles in Paint, Chalk and Oil Pastel Inspired by Paul Klee and Mary Blair

Recently I shared that my students were doing Shape Stations (or centers) in the art room. I did this after the success of both our Dot Day and Line Study stations. I’m loving the exploration the kids are able to do and the kids are loving it…for the same reasons. Not to mention, it’s just FUN to try a whole bunch of new ways to create in just a few art classes. Here’s a look at our Shape Stations:

And what we did during our Line Study:

And some behind-the-scenes tips on these stations:

Here is a look at the Dot Day stations that started it all:

And since we did two days worth of fun:

Once we finished creating artwork from our line study (lessons which I’ve yet to share here!), I ventured into shape. Currently, I’m doing shape stations with 2-4th only as kindergarten and first are in the middle of other projects. I do think that these shape stations would work for k-1st except maybe the radial symmetry design. But it’s always worth throwing the idea out there to see what the kids come up with, right?

Here’s a little look at what the back table in my art room looked like after I began prepping for our shape study. Initially we were going to do some shape stamps (seen in the upper left hand corner) but after giving that a run through with one class, I decided it was too similar to the sponge stamping. We switched to the bleeding tissue paper shapes in the end.

Now when I’m working through these station ideas, I also gotta start thinking: what are we gonna do with all of these papers and things we create? Here’s a little look at what I’ve come up with…

First grade is currently working on the self portrait in the upper left hand corner. This is a lesson I’ve done many times, you can check out the lesson here. As for 2-4th, well…I am currently having them all work on those castles! We will all do printing with our stars…and do some embossing too…but as of right now, we are all learning about Mary Blair. Here’s the video I created.

The kids are enjoying working with chalk and oil pastel. I’m excited to give them another opportunity to really explore a variety of supplies.

Above is my example and below is a class of I think thrid graders examples. I will say this…stations means the kids will often work quickly and not always at a slow and ‘careful’ pace. I’m fine with that. However, I did have a small handful of students later decide the wanted to redo theirs, knowing it was not their best work. I allowed that too.

So far, we’ve gotten the castles chalked in and now we are ready for the oil pastel.

Our backgrounds will be our bleeding tissue paper. Since winter is coming, we are turning it into a winter wonderland with snow…and a little bit of sparkle on the frame. Oh…and PUFFY PAINT. Everyone’s favorite!