Big-eyed Owls

 I cut out sets of eyes and beaks from egg cartons for this project. 

The egg carton eyes were hot glued to the construction paper. 

The students designed their owls and traced the in sharpie.

Then they painted the owls with combinations of brown, red, orange, yellow, and white.

After the owls were dry the students added on details and retraced some things with sharpie. 

They also filled in parts they weren't able to paint using the multicultural markers so that they could have various browns to use. 

So cute!

Majestic Mountains

I went to Telluride last month and was totally inspired by the mountains.  I decided to do a mountain focused lesson with my students and really emphasize the textural nature of them and how their contour is far from the zig-zaggy points usually drawn to represent them.

This year my classes are only 30 minutes and I travel to the classrooms.  I am limited on time, set-up time, clean-time, materials, space, everything pretty much.... so I have to really decide what I want to accomplish with the students.

This project took 3 30 minute sessions and I am so excited about the results!

First class we did a "watercolor science experiment" and discussed how to create what looks like texture in a picture and washes.
The students painted washes on watercolor paper with blue/purple/brown/black (AND i was able to use up my older watercolor sets that had those colors left!).
We sprinkled salt on the paint and placed saran wrap across parts of the paper to create textures in the paint as it dried.

Day two I printed out some examples of mountain ranges so that the students could examine various mountain contours. 

On OAK TAG the students drew a mountain range contour line across the top of the paper. They put a star on that side so they used the correct side each time. 

They cut along the line then traced the stencil on to the watercolor paper and cut out the mountain shapes  out of their painting. We also saved the cut off piece.

Day three we colored pastel along the edge of the oak tag stencil.

Then using a folded paper towel we brushed the pastel on black paper to create a colored silhouette in the night sky. 

We attached the black paper background,watercolor mountains, and smaller watercolor cut out together by stapling them together.  Then we used toothpicks to dot silver paint for stars in the sky.

Every single one of them was a great success!

another rotation symmetry!

Well while I'm on the subject of Rotation Symmetry here's a version done with metal and colored sharpies.

Clay Mandalas

For this lesson I introduced the concept of what a SLAB is in clay, rotation symmetry, Mandala's from various cultures, and Talavera tile designs from Mexico.

I had the students roll out their clay slab to be about 1/4" thick,  having them lay their hand down next to it to make it about the same thickness as their finger as a way to measure.  Then they traced around a circle stencil or paper plate to cut out their circle.
They created their symmetrical designs first on paper and then on the clay by incising into the clay and also building onto the clay to create a textural piece.
We used metallic acrylic and tempera paints on top of the air-dry clay.

FYI- I did this project during a summer class that did not have as many students as my public school classes but it would be very do-able in school. My students were grades 2-4. They came out beautiful!

Pop Art Leaves

This was a lesson I did with second graders two years ago that I wanted to share because it was a big hit.
The project had two parts.  The first part was a color mixing study and investigation into analogous colors.
The students chose a set of analogous colors that represented fall foliage colors.  We talked about how analogous colors are three "neighbor" colors on the color wheel and sometimes use the rhyme "three colors in a row, just like winning tic tac tow".  The students printed large dots using corks dipped in tempera paint.

We studied the work of Roy Lichtenstein (which is why we included the dot patterning) and Andy Warhol and discussed what the phrase "Pop Art" means.

The other part of the project was based on observational drawing.  The students observed the leaves, and drew in pencil and then traced in black pen.  They had to cut the contour of the leaf carefully and create a composition with their background when they glue-stick'ed them on.