Spooky Moonlit Branches

This is a great spooky Halloween project that I did with a mixed elective class of Gr. 4 - 6 this year.

I found the initial project HERE.

Students choose blue or purple construction paper- they draw on a large full moon and colour it with white or yellow chalk pastels. Then they fill in the background with cool colours and black and blend it all together with a paper towel. Then, using black tempera paint, they painted on a tree branch. We had previously practiced drawing bare branched trees so they were pretty confident drawing these.

The last step is to add a highlight to the tops of the branches using 

white chalk or a white coloured pencil. 

I'm lucky to have a roll laminator in my room so I try to laminate chalk pastel projects.

Glue Line Chalk Pastel Poppies

Every year I try to do a new poppy project for Remembrance Day.  Our school assembly is on November 1st this year, so I had to get these started a couple of weeks ago so I would have time to laminate them so they would be ready to hang in a couple of weeks.

Last year, we made large painted poppies. You can see that post HERE.

I was inspired by THIS photo I found on Pinterest. I couldn't find the original source, so if it's yours, please leave a comment below and I'll be sure to credit you :)

I altered the original project to use glue lines instead of, what looks like, black chalk lines. 

We used my favourite glue that I always use now for glue line projects: Elmer's clear glue. I buy the gallon sized and use it to fill empty squeeze bottles as I find the individual Elmer's glue bottles really hard and stiff to squeeze. My kids can barely do it. 

So start off my sketching some simple poppies onto black construction paper- we used 12x18".

Pass over all the lines with clear glue.

Let these dry FLAT overnight. The glue lines dry flat and super shiny.

Colour them using chalk pastels. We start by colouring the background, then the poppies last. 

This is super messy!!! I'm lucky to have a roll laminator in my room (it takes up alot of space, haha) so I try to laminate all chalk pastel projects- otherwise they just get ruined when the kids take them home. 

up close detail

Some Grade 4 - 6 results. 

These photos, taken with my crap camera phone, don't do them justice. 

They're much more vivid in person.

Autumn Tree with Falling Leaves

Fall where I live in Canada was VERY brief this year! One windy day comes along and all the leaves are blown off the trees- sigh. But my mixed elective class of Grade 4 - 6 students managed to get these pretty fall landscape finished in time before the snow fell. 

I found this lesson on the website: Art Projects for Kids HERE. It's a great lesson on perspective and the concept of near and far. 

My kids taped down heavy white paper and painted a simple sky and ground. 

While these were drying, they practiced drawing bare branched trees on scrap paper. 

When they were happy with their drawings, they drew the tree on their background paper.

They added in falling leaves of a variety of sizes and painted them using watercolours. 

They painted their tree using brown tempera. Once these were dry, students went in with dark pencil crayons to outline and add details to the leaves. 

detail of the leaves