Cave Painting In A Cave! First Grade Art Experience

I do a cave painting lesson with 1st grade every year.  They hear a story called "Discovery In the Cave", look at photos of cave paintings and draw their own small version of a cave animal painting.  This year as I looked at the large cardboard pieces our wonderful custodian had saved for me in my supply closet, I had an inspiration to make the lesson more exciting. What if I created a "cave" in my closet and the kids could actually paint on the walls?!

 

It took two planning times to create the cave using cardboard, brown kraft paper, staples and black paint but when it was done I thought it looked pretty good. I was anxious to see what the first graders would think about our "cave".

 

Luckily, 1st graders are easy to impress and get excited about special surprises because they loved it!  Some comments I heard as they entered the cave were: "This is so realistic!" and "This is so cool!".  I also heard "I want to live in here..." and "I think we could build one of these in my living room!"  I was happy that my students liked the cave so much.

 

 They each did a practice cave drawing (we discussed the fact that cave artists didn't get to practice on a paper first!) and then they entered the dimly lit cave to draw with oil pastels on a piece of the cave wall.

 

As the walls became covered with cave art, I added new pieces of paper to the cave.

First grade teachers enjoyed peeking into the cave to see the special surprise when they came to pick up their classes.

The 1st graders were very proud of their cave art,  but 2nd graders were rather unhappy
that I hadn't thought of this idea when they were in 1st grade!

Over all it was a very fun thing to do and I will definately make a cave next year.  Next week as a continuation of our lesson each 1st grader will get to paint on a REAL rock.