Happy Earth Day!

 

Happy Earth Day everyone.  Here's a quick post about a little mural we made last year.

 

Check out this post here on how we made this Earth-Friendly globe.

Snowmen Families

I really enjoyed this simple art project.     The original idea comes from Gail Bartel.

You may know her as 'That Artist Woman'.  Hop on over and check out her fabulous blog and her step-by-step instructions on how to make these cute families.

 

I used some grey card stock that I had lying around.  I like the contrast between the virbrant blue and stark white.

 

 

 After they stamped the families above they decorated their families.  I used a hole punch to punch out the little circles for buttons and eyes, but the rest was all done by them. 

 

Oh yeah, the letters were done with a die cutting machine.  Next time I do this activitiy I will use a die with smaller letters.  I didn't realize just how big some of the long names in my class would be.

 

I made sure that they only stamped family members that they live with.

 

 

This little girl is the youngest of 8 sisters.

 

Many of my students live with their grandparents too.

Don't forget to hop on over to Gail's blog for instructions.

Happy Holidays!!!

Well if you're like me, today is your last teaching day of 2012.

I thought I'd post up some art from the hallways of my school.

I found these amazing, patterned Santas in front of the Grade 6 classroom, and knew I needed to share them.  Enjoy!

 

 

Quick and easy wreath

 

 

Here's a super easy and really effective Christmas wreath.

You will need green construction paper in a variety of green colours.

You can die cut them in leaf shapes like I did, but if you don't have access to a die cutter, you can use leaf tracers, or punches, whatever you have around.

Sometimes I get the children to cut holly shaped leaves out of strips of green cardstock.

 

The you can cut a donut shape out of green cardstock.  I used a dinner plate for the outside ring and a smaller ring on the inside.  I also sometimes use a paper plate and cut out the inside.  It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, the whole thing will be covered up with leaves. 

slowly cover the ring with leaves.  Make sure the children layer them and cover up the green 'donut' shape.  Some of my students decided to pattern the leaves as in the ring below.

Add a bow of red ribbon and some Chrismtas foam shapes and voila!

Here are a few of my favourites.

 

Christmas Angels

 

Well December is almost here.  It's time to start the Christmas Art.

I don't ususally teach anything religious for Christmas, but these angels are really easy and effective.

 

Where I work, there are a number of christians, but there are also a lot of children whose families practice other religions.  I feel, that we are not supposed to teach religious doctrine in public schools, there's no harm in introducing the kids to the story of Christmas and where all the vocabulary comes from.

 

 

The kids will see nativity scenes and angels in the mall, and on people's lawn's, so I feel, as an educator, I need to teach the children all the vocabulary associated with Christmas.  I also teach Santa, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman etc.

 

Anyway, I had all these styrofoam balls, so we painted them with peach coloured paint.  Then the kids cut out half circles of scrapbook paper to make the skirt.

 

 

The arms were strips of other scrapbook paper with a pipe cleaner for sturdiness.   I cut up some older music, and folded it to make a choir book.

 

The hair and halo's were in my stash, and I attached them with a glue gun.

And the wings were made from cupcake papers from the big box stores.

Fall Leaves Art and Poem and a FREEBIE!

Here's a cute Art / Language Arts project for Fall that we did last week.

 

 

 

I need to apologize again for the terrible photos, please bear with me.

This is how we made the painting.

First we painted the background.  We used pucks of tempra paint.  I showed the children how to mix blue and black to make a stormy sky.

 

 

Next we painted black streaks on brown construction paper.  When the paint dried I gave the children a tracer to trace and cut out the tree shape.

 

Then we also painted with red, yellow and orange on watercolour paper.  When the paper was dry, we punched out the leaves with the Petal Punch from Stampin Up.  Any leaf punch will do.  The small maple leaves were a punch from the dollar bin at Michaels.  We also used some old scrapbook paper in fall colours that I had lying around.

Next we wrote the fall poems using a frame. (Scroll down for a free lesson prinable!!!)  The kids then typed them in the computer as best they could (with a little editing from me) and I printed them out.  I attached them to some purple construction paper and the kids cut them out using fancy scissors.

This was a very simple activity, but the kids got to experiment with colour mixing, watercolouring, composition, and paper collage.   Adding the language art component added the children's understanding of not only Language Arts and Fine Arts but also of Science.

 

Here's my latest FREEBIE over at Teacher's Pay Teachers.

We used this lesson to generate the poems and put a copy in their Songs and Poems books, then the typed version was added to this art project and hung up for display. This FREEBIE includes the blackline master, a coloured version if you want it for display purposes, a step-by-step guide to the lesson and a 'cheat sheet' to help explain the lesson form.

 

 

 

CLICK HERE

to download.

 

Hands Around the Earth

So here's a cute idea for Earth Day.

How about Re-Using newspaper for art?

Here's what we created this week in my class.

First, you need newspaper and a variety of shades of blue and green.

Next cover a page of paper with each colour.

Then, rip the paper into strips about 1 1/2" wide.

Then cut a large circle out of blue or green construction paper.  Sorry for the poor quality photo below.  I have a flowered tablecloth to protect my table, so it makes the project difficult to see.

I gave the children some of the strips of painted newspaper and showed them how to rip them into smaller squares and then the kids used gluesticks to create a collage.

I thought I would need to trim the edges, but the kids did a great job of staying close to the edge and I thought it gave the "earth" a more interesting look and added texture to the project.

I found the little foam people at the dollar store last year, but you can buy something similar at Michaels.  The kids loved adding the details to their little people.  For some reason Blogger keeps turning these photos on their side, so some of the people are upside down. Sorry for the mess.

Anyway, here's a look at the final project.  I love how bright it is.  And it was very easy to make.

Easter Baskets

I made these cute Easter Baskets with my class last week.

They were absolutely easy to make.  Of course the kiddos needed a bit of help, especially with the stapler.  But overall, the activity was unexpectedly simple. 

This is the template I used to create the baskets. 

The only difference is that I did not cut away the triangle shapes.

Click here for a link to a fabulous tutorial by Renee Van Stralen.

To modify it for my Grade 2 students I cut the paper to a 9x9 inch square.

Then I scored them into 9 squares - like a tic tac toe pattern.

I showed the children how to cut their own slits.

Once the basket was put together, the kids glued on the strap.

Then I came through with the stapler and secured it all together.

To cover the staples, I had the children decorate their baskets with stickers and die cuts.

Below you will see a variety of ways that they decorated their handles.

I gave them very little direction about what to do, and their creativity really surprised me.

We put a few other Easter crafts, chocolate eggs, and coloured eggs in the basket to take home.