Snowy Owl & Northern Lights

This is a cute little project my "Storybook Art" class made. This class is composed of students from Grade 1 -3. We read a picture book then make an artwork inspired by it. It's an elective class at my school- I really like teaching it! The students are all super dedicated little artists :)

This lesson came about when I realized about 20 minutes before class that I had nothing planned so I dashed to the Grade 3 classroom and frantically asked the teacher if I could borrow a book- I scanned her bookshelf and snagged this one: Arctic Fives Arrive.  I had no idea what the book was about or what type of art lesson we would do but I knew the kids would have some suggestions, hahaha :)

The book is very cute and basically tells the story of a group of Arctic animals gathering together on an iceberg to view the northern lights. The book rhymes and demonstrates how to count by fives. First, five snowy owls perch upon an iceberg. They are followed by five polar bears. Next, five ermine show up, and then five walrus, five Arctic hares and five musk oxen join the crowd. All the animals settle in for a view of the Northern Lights.

The iceberg gets very crowded very quickly, lol

I loved the apprehensive expression on the snowy owl's faces so we decided to draw them. 

We tried the ermine but I, for the life of me, couldn't even draw it!!  

It kept looking like a weird rat so we went with the owl, lol.

Students drew the snowy owl in pencil first, then outlines it using our KING SIZE Sharpies. This would ensure we could achieve the bold black line that was evident in the illustrations.

Then the coloured the eyes yellow and cut the owls out carefully.

On blue construction paper, students created Northern Lights by blending chalk pastels.

Then they washed their hands and carefully glued the owls on top- we had to use white glue as glue sticks just don't stick to the dry chalk pastels surface.

this one captured a mouse AND has earmuffs!