Cute Clay Cupcakes First Grade Lesson

This project is available on Pinterest.  The cupcakes turned out very cute.  It was necessary for me to check each bottom piece after it was pressed into the silicon cupcake wrapper to ensure that air bubbles had been removed from clay.  I did not do this with the first class and had a lot of breakage.  

These were painted with tempera paint and coated with gloss medium.

Parents really loved these adorable and colorful cupcakes.

Picasso Emoji First Grade Lesson

I like to do Picasso with my First Grade Students.  They enjoy learning about his different styles and how famous he is even though his paintings are so unusual.

This new lesson combined a popular icon EMOJIS with the Picasso lesson.

I began with a visual on the projector of common emojis.  I had students discuss at their tables the following questions: What are these called? How do you know about them? Where have you seen them? Do you think most people in the United States know about them? 

After discussion and coming to the conclusion that emojis are a popular item in our culture, we traced the inside of a tape roll in corner of our paper and chose an emoji to draw. We colored our circle with yellow and then drew chosen emoji with pencil and then colored with markers. 

Next the 1st graders traced a larger circle and glued it into middle of paper.

I read some parts of a book about Picasso, emphasizing his different color periods and cubism.  We then worked together to mix up our emoji in a Picasso style, using the same emoji as the small one but adding cubist shapes and moving face parts around.

Students thoroughly enjoyed this change up of the typical emojis!