a faithful attempt: Circle Grid Trees

This is a wonderful lesson to teach towards the end of a school year. It's fun, it's colourful and it's summery. But, it also takes quite a bit of focus and patience; a perfect art project for when the kids (and teacher!) are getting antsy for summer vacation. I've definitely noticed all of my classes starting to get louder, more hyper, so this is the time of the year when I pick my lessons very carefully in order to create a sense of calmness in the Art Studio.

This circle grid tree lesson is all over Pinterest, but I followed the excellent lesson found on the wonderful art website "Art Projects for Kids". Thank you as always Kathy!

I printed off the grid template onto regular photocopy paper. You could also print it onto cardstock if you want to paint these (I've yet to figure out how to manually feed cardstock into our complicated school photocopier!!)

I made two sizes: regular 81/2 x 11" small paper for the slower students and

then blew it up to 11 x 17 for the faster students.

I taught this lesson to a mixed Grade class: Grades 4 - 6.

First they sketch out their tree in pencil; many included patterns.

Then some started by outlining their trees in black, brown, etc. Then they used either cool or warm colours to colour their tree, then the opposite for their background. I gave them the option of using markers or coloured pencils. Younger students could also use wax crayons.