Circles and Mandalas, Painting on the first day of Art!

   Week 1
     This year I decided to start all of my classes creating circle paintings. Yep! Painting the very first day of art. First and second grades are creating radial design paintings using line, shape, and color. Grades 3-5 are creating personal mandala paintings.  We do have many new students to our elementary school, but so many return, I figured, they know the art team routines and my expectations, so why not?  I was so busy getting back into the flow of teaching, that pulling my phone out to photograph the action did not happen. Just trust me that each class was able to paint their paper plate (a perfect circle) one solid color. (4th and 5th could choose 2 colors)

     The inspiration for this lesson came from the circlepainting.com

 I love their website and their many photo albums from their events. If you have the means to host a circle painting project, it seems worth it to me. I did not show the images to the students, but did adapt the ideas to what I am teaching to my students.  

    The second website that I found information and images for this project is the mandalaproject.com
There is so much information and so many images you won't have the time to look at them all.

Week 2
    Now that I have three days under my belt I am getting back into the swing of things. I have worked out the timing and the flow of routines. All is good. (I met kindergarten this week, they are not ready for painting, more on those cuties later. . .) 

Fifth graders enlarge their favorite sketch to their painted mandala.

We should be finishing these circular beauties this week.