Black Cat Collage

This is a Halloween project I created for my Grade 3/4 class. I find that any animal-based projects are a big hit in the elementary grades, especially Grades 3 and 4, as they are just crazy about animals.

So start off by painting your background paper. We did a checkered, or gingham type pattern with orange tempera on white paper. I had them mix their own shade of orange using only yellow and red tempera. This way, you also get a variety of orange colours which is nice. Purple backgrounds would also be effective.

Using a flat brush, paint stripes one way...then the opposite way.

While the background paper is drying, begin the cat. I demonstrated on the whiteboard how to create a cat from simplified body parts: a big round head, smaller oval-ish body, two ears and a tail.

Students could add more details if they wished. Students draw this in a sheet of white paper. 

You could also use black paper to save time. I gave students the choice to paint their pieces with black tempera or colour them in with oil pastels.

Then cut all the pieces out.

And glue stick them onto your background painted paper. Now you have a blank canvas to work with in terms of adding embellishments for the face, etc. We simply used scraps of colored paper and white paint to add faces to our cats. You could also use pom poms, glitter, scrap fabric, etc.  Whatever you want!

I find the kids personalities really show in these in terms of how they draw their cats. You get fat ones, skinny tall ones, little, tiny feminine ones, etc. They all turn out super cute.

Here are the Grade 3,4 results.

Ta da!