Paper Plate Pointsettia Painting

A perfect little holiday lesson using paper plates (buy the thin cheap kind!) and tempera paint.

Project credits go the amazing Deep Space Sparkle- lesson HERE.

These were made by mostly Grade 4 and 5 students.

Snow globe Illustrations

This is one of my favourite winter projects as it lets my students be super creative and I never know what my kids will come up with. I give them pretty free reign with this- the theme is kinda 'if I lived in a snowglobe'. Materials are simple: construction paper and coloured pencils. I've posted the steps HERE previously. 

These are from my mixed class of Grade 7-9:

Korhogo Cloth Paintings

Korhogo cloth is an African textile made by the Senufo people of Korhogo, Ivory Coast. Korhogo comes in neutral and earthy tones like browns, blacks and creams. Korhogo is made by hand painting designs on hand woven and hand spun cotton fabric. The paintings are done using a specially fermented mud-based and natural vegetable pigment that darkens over time, and designs are usually drawn on using a stencil. They are decorated with symbols of humans, natural elements like the sun, moon and stars and animals, all of which are rooted in Senufo culture and mythology. (source)

I started off by showing Grade 6 students a map of Africa. I love incorporating geography into my art lessons. I like to emphasize that Africa is a continent not a country!!  Students learned where the Ivory Coast is and I showed them a slideshow of different types of Korhogo.

actual sample

So Grade 6 students started by drawing a border and filling it with a pattern. They all wanted to use rulers but I told them they needed to look handmade and more organic. Then they chose animals to illustrate and filled them with the typical line patterns. 

I mixed up some brown tempera with some black to create a dark brown shade. Students collected sticks from outside and then traced over all the pencil lines with the paint. The kids found using the sticks super frustrating so I had to continually encourage them to keep going!

This project took quite a while to complete! We used fairly large paper so stick to smaller paper if you want it to go by faster. 

Some Grade 6 results:

Remembrance Day Collage Peace Doves

Every year I try to design a new project for Remembrance Day. This year I decided on a torn paper collage of doves as I found some textured paper that I'd had for years and 

hadn't gotten around to using. 

On 11x17" large heavy paper, Grade 4 - 6 students sketched out a dove shape. 

Then they cut it out. 

Each student then took a square of the textured paper and tore it into 

rectangular feather-like shapes.

Using white glue and a paintbrush , they collaged the paper 

onto their dove shape. 

Finally, they added a beak and a eye made from construction paper.

I love the soft textured effect of these birds!

Some Grade 4 - 6 results!