Welcome back!

I love the first weeks of school.  Everybody is back in a routine and discovering who is in their classes and how things work.  I think the kids are just as excited about their new shoes as they are their new teachers!

This year I decided to begin with a drawing lesson that teaches all of my first through fourth graders how to draw a self-portrait.  I taught them how to draw each facial feature and how to position it on the face.  I taught them to draw the shape of the hair, not to color hair strands with their pencils.  We also learned the term monochromatic.  I showed some examples of monochromatic paintings and then students colored their self-portraits monochromatically using colored pencils and crayons.  I emphasized coloring neatly and using varying pressure on the crayon to create different values (light and dark) of color.
Click here for the original lesson idea.