Getting ready for winter!

It's getting cold out already, some of my students have begun wearing gloves and hats.  I thought I'd start to put up some of my winter projects from last year.  This project is a great use for all those leftover scraps of felt, fabric, pom poms, yarn pieces-- and especially when they all end up mixed up in a bin ;)

The students traced around their hands to create a mitten shape.  I have them work with the person next to each so that they can get both hands on their successfully.  Then they designed a hat shape.
They watercolored with cool colors in the negative space around the mitten and hat shapes.
The next class when the watercolor was dry, the students glued fabric and other scraps in the empty spaces.  Some students used the 'random glueing' strategy, other students were very strategic with their placement and color selection.  I am really fine with either.
The final touch was white tempera and sparkle paint.  The students lightly dabbed the paint on with small sponges to create the illusion of frost or snow.

Another anchor lesson

This anchor lesson I did with a summer class of 2nd/3rd graders.  It is very simple yet effective.  I showed the students how to draw an anchor and we looked at a few photos of them.  The challenge for them was to create a strong composition using the shape of the anchor.  I also encouraged them to use more than just straight blue for the water painting element.  These were watercolor paintings that we mounted and used scraps of a previous project for the mosaic-like frame.

Lighthouses & Anchors

Summertime in New England is a lot about the ocean (as you would probably assume).  At the end of the school year I was inspired by lighthouses and anchors. 

This project had three parts. 

Part one was drawing the lighthouse on a vertical piece of paper.  I decided to go with 6 x 18 paper because I really wanted the students to focus on the verticality of the lighthouses and how they create a landscape (or in this case and 'oceanscape') vertically rather than horizontally.  

As a class we looked at various pictures of different lighthouses and also the inside of the light itself. 

We discussed the history of lighthouses, why they were created, how people lived there, and how long they had been in existence.  Students who had visited lighthouses talked about what the inside felt like. 

I also showed them some of Edward Hopper's paintings of New England and lighthouses.

The students drew the lighthouse first with pencil.  They then added on other parts of their landscape.  They were painted with watercolor.

When the students finished this part they looked at pictures and diagrams of fishing trawlers.

They drew the boats on separate paper, painted them, and cut them out.   

These were glued on when dry. 

Additionally, one class period the students created anchors out of model magic, making sure to leave a hole at the top via looping the model magic or by poking a hole.  We painted them with silver tempera.

We put the pictures all together by mounting them on construction paper so that they could have the parts  create an interesting composition by going outside of the vertical lighthouse drawing paper. 

Another lighthouse project I did was with a fourth grade class using the roll of metal. 

The key to drawing successfully on this metal if you don't use it often is-

-Making sure the kids have folded newspaper underneath the metal as a cushion so that the pencil can really incise the metal

-Encouraging the students to write on both sides of the metal so that some of the lines and texture can push in and some can pop out

-I like to use the bigger pencils (like the fat ticonderoga ones) rather than regular size pencils

the fat pencils tend to make better marks without poking holes or breaking

-Demonstrate how students can fill in the SPACES with colored sharpie or metallic marker rather than just retrace their lines. This creates a successful silver outline around their drawing and details.

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!