With my fourth graders, I read to them about Georgia O'Keefe. I then started off the demo by talking to them about the placement of their flower on their paper. I talked to them about how expert artists don't put stuff right in the middle of the page, they set it off to one side. I then showed them some pictures of flowers and talked about how the petals were the same shape, they just became increasingly larger the further they got from the center of the flower. So I drew a quick drawing of a flower, showing how the petals grew and grew and how each layer was offset from the previous one. They were given a sheet with a variety of different types of flowers that they could reference while drawing. We then painted using warm colors. I tried to emphasize to them to place little 'bursts of color' from the bottom of each petal. I think this point largely fell on deaf ears. Lastly, they will come back in with black and outline their petals, as well as painting the background. The examples below are my paintings. Some of them are finished and some of them aren't.

This is another lesson that I was observed by a university professor. We watched a short video on George Rodrigue's Blue Dog. I then showed them how to draw a dog by breaking it down into simple shapes. We then talked about tints and shades and went on a tint and shade scavenger hunt, photographing any t&s with our iPad's. They then painted their dogs in tints and shades of blue. Lastly, they added details such as spots, collars, etc with cray-pas.

Black River Falls has a large fiberglass orange moose outside of one of its restaurants. We used this as inspiration for a pop-art/Warhol inspired project. The students folded their sheets into fourths. Then they traced a moose onto each square that had been folded. Then they traced the moose in black marker. We then talked about complimentary colors. The students outlined their moose with a crayon and then used watercolors to paint them complimentary colors.