Canadian Animals with Antlers Silhouette Watercolor Painting

This is a watercolor project inspired by a Social Studies teacher I used to work with. He wanted to teach about Canadian animals with antlers. See my more detailed post about this lesson HERE.

Discuss with kids all the different animals we have in Canada with antlers. Don't get confused like me and say 'big horn sheep'- they have horns not antlers!  Antlers are made of true bone, are grown annually, and are dropped and re-grown each year. They are found in the deer family (Cervidae). 

Did you know that the moose is the largest member of the deer family!

Horns (found on animals like Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goats, or Bison) have a bony core covered in a permanent sheath made of keratin, and they are never shed.

We are lucky to live near Banff National Park so most, if not all of my students have seen these animals in the wild!

I changed it up a bit this year. Instead of painting the animal with black paint, we used sharpies. I'm finding the kids joining my classes in Grade 4 are lacking the fine motor skills kids pre-covid had. It's really disheartening to see. Kids are having way too much screen time and art teachers are seeing the consequences of that big time. 

Some Grade 4/5 finished artworks:

 

Hot Air Balloon Watercolour Painting

This is a lovely summer art project that just evokes happiness! It's a great lesson to teach the art element of SPACE. Students followed THIS tutorial, from Art Projects for Kids. Then they outlined in Sharpie and coloured with watercolour or pencil crayons, or both!

I taught this to Grades 4-6.

 

Wax Resist Watercolour Flowers

Another great lesson I tried from Deep Space Sparkle!

The key to this working out well and having a real wax resist effect, is to really emphasize pressing hard with the white wax crayons. My kids didn't so you couldn't really see the effect. But the kids enjoyed it and they turned out nice nonetheless. Grade 4 and 5's at work below!

 

Stylized Winter Trees in Watercolour

 

This is a popular winter landscape lesson I found years ago HERE on the wonderful Dutch art blog "Kids Artists".

I love this lesson because it incorporates beautiful winter landscapes which my country, Canada, is famous for!  I'm lucky to live near the world famous Rocky Mountains and have done many hikes, including Chester Lake below, in the winter. It's an intense workout (snowshoes and going uphill is not fun, lol) but the views and mountain air are worth it.

So my Grade 4-6 students start by looking at photos of our beautiful winter forests here in Alberta. We discuss the variety of sizes and how trees get smaller as they get further away. 

For this lesson, we are creating stylized winter tress, meaning they are simplified for artistic purposes.

Using watercolour paper (we use Hilroy brand, it's fantastic), students paint it with liquid watercolours and sprinkle on salt. This will be their tree paper. Let dry overnight.

Next class, students use another sheet of watercolour paper and paint a sky of their choice. 

Then they dab on white paint for falling snow. 

Switching to the salt watercolor tree paper, students use a ruler to draw a variety of sizes of triangles for their evergreen trees. Cut out. Then they outline them in gold or silver marker.

Glue these onto the sky paper.

These are always a successful project for all abilities!