Apple Trees Art Lesson

This is a watercolour/illustration lesson based on one of my all-time favourite books from my childhood: Apple Pigs by Ruth Orbach. It's about a little girl who takes care of a neglected apple tree which then ends up producing thousands of apples. It contains wonderful messages of taking care of nature and sharing.

I read this book to my "Storybook Art" class which I teach to a group of Grade 2 students. 

After reading it, the kids sketched out an apple tree landscape scene in pencil. Then they went over their lines in Sharpie.

They painted them using watercolours- I use the brands Prang and Crayola (8 pan colours). Both are similar in quality but both have vastly different blues- the Crayola one is a beautiful turquoise while the Prang one is more of a true blue. Yes, I'm one of those Art teachers that does comparison painting test charts for different brands of paint! I love reading other bloggers reviews of different brands as well :) Here's a great comparison by Mini Matisse. 

For the apples, I found this bag of "decorative balls" (tiny styrofoam balls) at the Dollar store. 

They're supposed to be for filling vases for fake flowers or something. 

They are the perfect size. One bag was enough for 10 students.

Once the pantings were more or less dry, the kids glued on the 'apples' using 

small dots of white glue ('just a dot, not a lot'-  haha!)

I think they are so sweet, cheerful and charming!

Oh, early finishers painted apples which we're going to cut out to use for the border of our bulletin board display. Stay tuned- I'm hanging it on Monday!