Saturday, December 22, 2012

Snow Globe Drawings


Here are some super cute snow-globe illustrations created by Grade 1 students. 
I provided each student with a large circle drawn on regular white drawing paper. We brainstormed ideas of things they might see inside a snow-globe. Even though students contributed a wide variety of ideas, we still ended up with loads of snowmen ;) lol- easy to draw, I suppose...

I've also taught a slightly different snow-globe project with older students (Grade 6). 
Click here if you'd like to see it.

So they started out by drawing their picture in pencil first.Then they coloured in their picture using coloured pencils. They coloured everything except the snow (leave white obviously) and the sky. 

For the sky, just for something a little different, we used watercolor pencils.
 
Let these dry and then cut them out. Then students cut out a slightly large circle out of blue or turquoise construction paper and glued the white snow-globe onto it. Then they cut out a black triangle for a simple base and glued that behind. The last step was to dip the end of a thin paintbrush into white paint, and 'dab' snowflakes all over their picture. 
I threw on some white ultra-fine glitter over the wet paint for added SPARKLE!!! 

Tadaaa!







 






Monday, December 17, 2012

Doily Snowmen Collage

This little guy makes me so happy! :)
It's like he's leaping through the snow saying, "Weeeeeeeeeee!"

This is a fairly simple collage snowman project that's great for the last week before winter vacation when the kids are getting all squirmy and antsy. These adorable characters were created by
Grade 1 students and the whole project took them probably about 30 minutes or so. 
 
The only materials required are paper doilies (we used the same size ones as that's all I had on hand, but you can also use three different sizes), scrap coloured paper, background paper (we used blue and turquoise), white crayons or oil pastels (for the snow), scissors and glue sticks.
 
First, students coloured some snow on the bottom of their background paper. Then they glued on the two doilies, making sure to slightly overlap them (good vocabulary word for them). Once that was completed, they were free to embellish their snowmen with the scraps of coloured paper. I brainstormed with the kids some things they could add, as this helps kids who need more guidance and ideas (we're not all creative, right?!) Some ideas they shared: hats, scarves, buttons, face, sun, trees, etc. Many of the boys asked if they could add legs- I find it so interesting that only the boys ask this.

 
Tadaaa!
 
 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 
 
 

 


 
 

 


 


 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Reindeer at the Window Collage


This is one of my favourite holiday projects to do with young students. These "reindeer looking in the window" collages were created by Grade 1 students. I've done a 'Rudolph' version as well which you can see here. (You simply substitute a red nose)

This is a good project to reinforce shapes and cutting/pasting skills.

For this project you simply need:
  • scissors
  • glue sticks 
  • large red paper for the background/border
  • blue paper
  • brown paper
  • scraps of black, white paper and any other colours the kids want

We use plastic lids to trace the heads and other lids lying about (baby food jars, glue stick lids, etc) to trace circles for the nose and eyes. The neck, arms and antlers are varying widths of long rectangles. And the hooves are simply black squares cut in half (two triangles). I demonstrate all the steps first, asking the kids what the shapes are as I go along. Once everything is glued on, they use crayons to add any details they want (pupils, eyelashes, eyebrows, mouth, etc).
I always find the expressions on these so cute and funny :) !!!
As well, I find the reindeer themselves really represent/express
the personality of the student that created it.






Grade 1 results- Ta da!