Mrs. Ryback's Art Studio: 1st Grade: "My House is me and I am it!"-The Big Orange Splot

1st graders let their imaginations go WILD with our first project of the year! This unit is based on the book The Big Orange Splot, by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. In the book, Mr. Plumbean's neat and tidy street is "ruined" when a bird drops a can of orange paint on his roof ("No one knows why.") Instead of painting over the orange splot, Mr. Plumbean takes this as an opportunity to turn his house into his dream house. In doing so, he slowly inspires his neighbors to do the same. When asked why their houses look so different, unique and extravagant, Mr. Plumbean and his neighbors all say, "My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams."

After reading the book and observing the wild and outlandish designs of the houses, 1st graders set out to design their own dream homes. And they were encouraged to DREAM BIG! A dream house can be anything, from a mansion to a giant dog, even an underwater mermaid palace! But, every dream house must touch the ground, or horizon line, and include all the necessary parts of a house (windows, doors, etc...).

Here are just a few of the WILD ideas students had for their dream houses:

a lion
a floating house
and underground house
the White House
a robot
a heart-shaped house
a dinosaur house
a house with a unicorn that shoots rainbows and a sun that sweats into a swimming pool
a spy house
a cake house
a Mario house
a hotel
a house shaped like a giant bed
a paintbrush-shaped house
a fish-shaped house
a mermaid cottage
a butterfly-shaped house
a shark-shaped house
a floating house
a Ninja house
a haunted house
Sponge Bob's entire neighborhood
castles (of course!)

These houses came equipped with some truly incredible features, including:

a zip line
pools
ghosts
draw bridges
balconies
pet sharks
a museum room
a movie theater
a slide
a stream, river and moat
a hockey rink
a climbing wall
a play ground
lots of flowers, some gigantic

and, of course, some very creative ways of integrating windows, doors and other features, such as a dog's tongue that is a slide, animals' eyes that are windows, and a door in the lion's mouth, just to name a few.

After sketching in pencil, we inked our lines with Sharpies and added color with oil pastels. Students were shown how to blend colors with the oil pastels, and advised to press hard to achieve bright colors. They were also encouraged to think outside of the box when selecting colors for their houses, remembering how Mr. Plumbean's house looked like "an explosion" of color and pattern! After coloring in our houses we used watercolor paint to paint the sky.