Colorful Clowns for First Grade

These clowns are a perennial favorite in the art room. They add color to the art room walls, bring smiles to your budding artist and teaches a plethora of art techniques. You can either cut out the clown and paste onto a black piece of paper or leave as is. I have done both but my preference is pasting onto black.

Supplies:
18" x 24" white paper (yes, I know! It's big!)
Small and large bristle brushes
Tempera Paint in a variety of colors
Black Tempera Paint (watered down slightly)
Pencils
Scissors and glue

Step One: Drawing the Clown
I chose a large sheet of paper because it's almost impossible to draw a small clown! Demonstrate the different ways you can identify clowns (red nose, fuzzy hair, patterned clothes, etc.). Now draw examples of these. As many types of faces as you can. If you have photos of clowns, great!
Using pencils, give the children 10 or 15 minutes to draw a clown. I don't do a directed line drawing here. This project should really come from the child's imagination, so let them explore. The only interference I'd give is to encourage them to draw large. If they are having trouble, put out a round plastic container so they can trace a round face. This at least will get them off to the right size.

Step Two: Painting the Clown
Using any color but black (at least for now!) paint in the clown. This is a good time to teach how to layer paint. For example, to add polka dots to the pants, fill in the background of the pants with one color, then wait until the paint dries a bit. Then, use a small brush to add dots. The trick here is to have the children start thinking in layers.

Step Three: Adding Details
Now that the paint has dried a bit, add facial features, flowers to their hair, balls for juggling, etc.
Then, using a small brush dipped into watered-down black tempera paint, trace over all teh pencil lines. This step will really make the clown pop!

Step Four: Cutting out the Clown
After the clown has dried completely, cut it out and paste onto a large sheet of black paper.

Colorwheel Clown Art Project:

I wish I could remember the website where I found this lesson! It's one of my favorite kinder lessons that incorporates a color wheel. This lesson is a bit involved. It usually takes three 30-minute classes to complete this project but it's worth it.

You'll need the following:

• white card stock with a color wheel pattern (I made mine by tracing the bottom of a container and adding the lines).
  
• Plain white card stock (for the head)
• small pieces of leftover construction paper in a variety of colors.
• 12" x 18" colored construction paper for each child.
• glue sticks
• Red, yellow and blue tempera paint
  
• pencil, scissors and a plastic cup for each child
  

Step One: Making the color wheel.

Pass out a blank color wheel to each child. Each child should have their own paper plate with a small dab of yellow, red and blue paint, a small paint brush and a container of water to share.
Instruct the children to paint one "pizza" slice yellow, then red, then blue. Next, ask the children to paint a slice orange. They'll tell you that they don't have any orange paint so you'll show them how. Do the same for purple and green. Set the colorwheels to teh side to dry.

Next, have the children trace the opening of the plastic cup onto the blank piece of paper. This will later be the face. If there is time, cut out the face.















Step Two: Adding facial features with paper
Now that the color wheel is dry, the children can cut around the edges. Glue the face and color wheel (belly) to the colored sheet of construction paper. Make sure to glue the head first and demonstrate the proper place to glue it.

Once the face and belly are in place, the kids can use the small bits of colored paper to add eyes, a nose, a mouth and even hair to their clown's face.

Step Three: Painting the clown's outfit
Using tempera paints, paint hair, arms, dress, pants, clown shoes, etc. on construction paper. Encourage patterns like polka dots and stripes.

Note: If the length of your class runs longer than 30 minutes you can probably complete this lesson in two sessions not three.