Dinosaur Fossils

This is a fun art project, particularly if you teach a dinosaur unit. It's a simple wax-resist technique which is *supposed* to mimic the look of dinosaur fossils revealed in an archaeological dig.

Grade 3 students started off by looking through books and doing research on laptops to find 

a skeleton image of a dinosaur they wanted to draw. Draw this skeleton on white paper. 

I demonstrated on the board how it's helpful to start with the head, then sketch in the neck/backbone/vertebrae, then onto the hip bone and tail, then finally adding the arms and legs.

Once the drawing is finished, color in all the bones with a white wax crayon or white oil pastel.

Press nice and hard.

I pre-mixed up a large batch of watered down 'dirt' colored tempera paint. 

Basically brown tempera with a touch of black in it. I like to mix up a bunch of different shades of brown so the students' artwork has some variety.

It's super helpful to do a test batch of paint beforehand to figure out how runny or watered-down the paint needs to be. Too thick and it will just cover over the skeleton completely.

Then paint over the dinosaur skeleton. 

Blot off paint from the skeleton with a tissue, if necessary.

Ta da!

Cheery Rainbows with Pop-out Flowers

This is a very Spring-like art project, but I figure I'd post it now in time for St. Paddy's Day (rainbow-related and all). I found this to be a perfect project for Grade 1 students (6 years old); slightly challenging with the pop-up flowers but not frustrating-ly so.

Start off by teaching and/or reviewing the colors found in a rainbow: ROY G BIV

On a regular white sheet of paper, landscape format, students draw/color a rainbow using wax crayons. 

I reminded the kids to press fairly hard so they'd get nice bright colors.

I had pre-cut pieces of green construction paper (about 3-4 inches high) to fit along the bottom of the paper. I demonstrated how to cut 'zig-zag/triangles' grass for confident students, or, a simpler 'fringe' for kids that aren't so good with manipulating scissors. Glue the grass paper to the bottom of the rainbow sheet.

On heavy weight white paper, students drew 3 large, simple flowers and colored them with wax crayons. 

Markers would also look nice. Cut these out.

I showed each students (called them up one-by-one) and showed them how to make a small paper spring (a thin, short strip of heavyweight white paper folded accordian style). We made them step-by-step together, then they went back to their tables and made the third one by themselves. Glue these to the bottom of each flower and then glue the other end of the spring to the green grass. I encouraged students to go back and add details to the background (sun, clouds, insects, etc, etc....)

Ta da!