Teaching Cursive Writing Strokes with Watercolor Paint

Learning should be fun, but when you're teaching cursive writing, it can be a challenge to make learning cursive writing fun. Today, we threw in a bit of art (shame on all you administrators for taking it out of classrooms) and we learned how to write cursive letter strokes using watercolors.

A student will make more fluid natural strokes using a paintbrush, so this is a super way to connect watercolor painting and cursive writing.

We started with the basic cursive writing strokes: undercurve, downcurve, overcurve, slant, and connector.

 

Using a paintbrush, it's easy to work with moving the brush and holding the brush in the right way to make the strokes.

The kiddos used different color paints and practiced their strokes across the sheet of paper. Oh, did I mention that they had fun learning cursive too? Art belongs in the classroom. It's a super teaching tool.

Thanks for stopping by,
Robin Sellers @ Sweet Tea Classroom

Vincent van Gogh in the Classroom: Integrate Art and Integrate Fun

I cannot stress enough the importance of art in the classroom. Art gives students a great opportunity to be creative and it gives you a wonderful opportunity to integrate fun, writing, and history. First, I passed out this great outline of van Gogh's Starry Night that I found online through a Pinterest pin as a free printable from Practical Pages.

I passed out the handout with no background information. "Make this creative," I said. That was it. "This looks familiar," I heard. I was so excited to see the results. Look at this. {Um, maybe it had a little bit of a Clint Eastwood flair--that town is painted red.} I do love the colors in the sky--planets maybe?

Now, on to step 2. We studied Vincent van Gogh, and we looked at his worked. We looked at Starry Night. Then I had a new set of directions. "Recreate," I said. 

Now, you see a more van Gogh-like Starry Night, but I still love the 2nd  grade colors above. We just used crayons and then went over the pictures with a water color wash. Just get water and add a bit of water color paint (the cheap kind works) and brush quickly over the crayons.

Now, I'm big on integration. We've had a history lesson, an art lesson, even learned a new art technique. It's time for more integration fun. We added a bit of writing. It's a perfect fit to get students to work with descriptive writing. Get your kiddos to draw and recreate their own Starry Night on the top of the page. Then they write a description of the word below it. It's a great way to add directional words too. 

Enjoy!
Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom