Cute Critters in 1st Grade

First graders are learning about the parts of an insect (head, thorax, abdomen, antennae, wings, and six legs) as they design super cute critters.

We drew on these handouts to make sure that our designs included all the important parts of the insect in a good place and size

Great resource for helping young artists draw the parts of an insect

Transition from physical to digital

View the Gallery of Critter Sketches here

I photographed the drawing sheet after students traced their design with black marker and erased their pencil lines. Then I cropped the text from the sheet and adjusted the brightness and contrast until each little critter became a clean black and white design.

Coloring in Colorscape App

Students learned to download their drawings from the dropbox and import them into the Colorscape app. They explored the tools and digitally colored their art. View the finished insects in our Artsonia Gallery here.

Click to view the gallery of colored insects

Making these critters fly in Do Ink App

Students took a nature photo on the school grounds with their iPad and used it as the background for these short flying animations. They were then turned in to me and complied into a class movie (see below). Their individual screen shots from their animations are on artsonia in this exhibit.

Critter saved with erased background

nature photo

Animation created in Do Ink

1-1 Flying Critters from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

1-2 Flying Critters from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

1-3 Flying Critters from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

1-4 Flying Critters from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

1MA Flying Critters from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

View a similar project:

Third graders, a few years back, made anti-litterbugs that cleaned up our community as they flew around Arlington Heights. See my post for details.