Lesson Notes By Weeks and Term v5 - Grade 1

Lesson Video

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Performance objectives

• Overview:
• This week, we embark on a creative journey into the world of drawing and painting. Creative Arts is a wonderful way for learners to express their feelings, ideas, and stories without using words. It is a fundamental part of developing fine motor skills, observation, and imagination. In the South African context, art is all around us – from the vibrant geometric patterns on Ndebele houses and the intricate beadwork of the Zulu people, to the ancient rock art of the San. By learning about the basic building blocks of art – lines, shapes, and colours – learners connect with their own creativity and the rich artistic heritage of our nation. This lesson focuses on identifying primary colours and using different lines and basic shapes to construct images from their own world, fostering self-expression and building foundational skills for all future learning.
• Learning Objectives (CAPS Aligned):
• By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:
• Identify and name the three primary colours: red, yellow, and blue.

Lesson summary

Overview: This week, we embark on a creative journey into the world of drawing and painting. Creative Arts is a wonderful way for learners to express their feelings, ideas, and stories without using words. It is a fundamental part of developing fine motor skills, observation, and imagination. In the South African context, art is all around us – from the vibrant geometric patterns on Ndebele houses and the intricate beadwork of the Zulu people, to the ancient rock art of the San. By learning about the basic building blocks of art – lines, shapes, and colours – learners connect with their own creativity and the rich artistic heritage of our nation.

Lesson notes

This is the core of our art adventure! We will learn about the three magic tools that artists use to create everything we see in pictures. A. The Magic of Lines A line is like a dot that goes for a walk! It's the very first step in drawing anything. Lines can show movement, create patterns, and form shapes.

Let's meet some line families: Straight Lines: These lines are stiff and don't bend. Think of the edge of your desk, a ruler, or the pole of a street light in your neighbourhood.

How: You press your crayon down and move your hand straight across, up, or down without wiggling.

Example:* We can use straight lines to draw a house or a window.

Curvy Lines: These lines are relaxed and bend smoothly. Think of a snake moving, a river like the great Orange River, or the shape of a smile.

How: You let your hand move in a smooth, flowing, bending motion.

Example:* We can use curvy lines to draw clouds, hills, or the petals of a flower.

Zigzag Lines: These lines are full of energy! They have sharp corners and change direction suddenly. Think of lightning in a thunderstorm or the peaks of the Drakensberg mountains.

How: You draw a short straight line, then make a sharp turn and draw another, like climbing up and down a mountain peak very fast.

Example:* We can use zigzag lines to show grass, a crown, or spiky hair. B. The Power of Shapes When lines meet and hold hands, they create a shape! Shapes are all around us. For today, we will focus on three very important shapes.

The Circle: A circle is perfectly round with no corners. It goes around and around.

How: Start at one point and draw a curvy line that comes all the way back to meet where you started.

Example:* The sun in our sky is a circle. A ball is a circle. The wheels on a taxi are circles.

The Square: A square is a shape with four straight sides that are all exactly the same length. It has four sharp corners.

How: Draw one straight line down. From the bottom, draw another straight line across. Go up with a third straight line. Finish by closing the top with a fourth straight line.

Example:* A window in a classroom, a slice of bread for a sandwich, or some tiles on the floor can be squares.

The Triangle: A triangle has three straight sides and three corners.

How: Draw a straight line for the bottom. Then, from each end of that line, draw two more straight lines that go up to meet at a point.

Example:* The roof of a simple house is often a triangle. A slice of pizza is a triangle. A warning sign on the road is a triangle.

C. The Super-Colours: Primary Colours Colours make our world beautiful! Some colours are extra special. They are called Primary Colours. They are like the 'parents' of all the other colours. You cannot make them by mixing other colours.

The three primary colours are: Red: A warm, strong colour. Think of a juicy tomato, a stop sign, or the red stripe in our South African flag.

Yellow: A bright, happy colour. Think of the sun, a lemon, or a field of sunflowers in the Free State.

Blue: A cool, calm colour. Think of the deep blue ocean at Durban, the clear sky on a sunny day, or the blue stripe in our flag. These three colours are the foundation of painting. Later, we will learn how to mix them to create new colours! Guided Practice (With Solutions)

Question 1: The Wavy River and the Spiky Mountain Task: On your paper, let's draw a wavy line at the bottom to be a river. Then, above it, draw a zigzag line to be a mountain.

Worked Solution: Take a blue crayon for the river. Place the crayon on one side of the paper. Move your hand in a smooth, gentle, up-and-down curving motion across the bottom of the page. This creates the wavy line. Now, take a brown or black crayon for the mountain. Move your hand up diagonally, then sharply down diagonally, up again, and down again. This creates the pointy, sharp corners of a zigzag line.

Commentary: We are practicing controlling our hand movements. The wavy line is a soft movement, while the zigzag line is a sharp, sudden movement. This helps our hand muscles get stronger for writing and drawing.

Question 2: Building a Shape House Task: Let's use a square and a triangle to draw a simple house.

Worked Solution: First, we draw the main part of the house. We need a big square. Use a crayon to draw four straight lines of the same size that connect at four corners. (Draw down, across, up, and across to close it). Next, we need a roof. The roof is a triangle. Find the middle of the top line of your square. Make a dot above it. Draw a straight line from the top-left corner of the square up to the dot. Draw another straight line from the top-right corner of the square up to the same dot. You have made a triangle for the roof!

Commentary: We are learning that complex pictures are just simple shapes put together. A square and a triangle, which we know how to draw, can become something we recognise, like a house.