Wax Crayon Batik Style Pumpkins

I love wax crayon style batik projects- they usually have a really high success rate with all students.

I found THIS project via Pinterest using pumpkins and thought it would be perfect for an October lesson with my Grade 5 students. 

This is also a great lesson in learning how to draw a pumpkin realistically, to give it a sense of form. My students have already practiced this with me in Grade 3 and 4 so are pretty good at this point and need little drawing guidance.

They drew their pumpkin on regular photocopy paper. 

Then they coloured it in thickly using wax crayons.

Trace over the pencil lines with a black crayon. This helps it stand out later.

Once everything is coloured in, they crumple up their artwork one or two times. 

They get a big kick out of this part! Then flatten it out.

I usually use watered down acrylic black acrylic pant for the batik effect. Paint a layer over the entire artwork, wait a couple minutes or so, then I rinse them off in the sink and put them to dry on a large piece of construction paper.

Some Grade 5 results

Owls & Cats in the Moonlight

This is a fun October/November project that my Grade 4 and 5 students quite enjoyed. It's an oil pastel resist project that I found HERE on the blog "Kids Artists". You can find all the instructions there. We substituted black tempera pucks for the blue ink. The biggest challenge was getting the kids to draw their animal nice and big, so it wouldn't get 'lost' amongst the tree and branches.

Bugs in the Garden

I found the perfect art project to tie into an insect unit Grade 2 students had just finished. 

I found this lesson on the art blog "K-8 Art" here.

I pre-traced (used a large plastic ice cream lid) a whole bunch of large circles onto medium weight white drawing paper. Students could choose any flying insect they wanted- most, if not all, chose a dragonfly or butterfly. Draw that off-center somewhere, focussing on getting the correct body parts (head, thorax, abdomen, wings, antennae). Then, fill in the rest of the circle with a variety of flowers. We discussed variety and how it makes an artwork more interesting to look at. We talked about varying the sizes, heights and types of flowers. After drawing in pencil, ideally you should have the kids outline the flowers and insect with a permanent black marker. We had run out, however, so used washable black markers at the end, once the watercolour step had dried.

Color in everything, except the sky/background, using wax crayons. 

Students had fun painting over the whole image with watercolor paint. Let dry.

Once dry, you can outline with black markers like we did, then cut out the circle.

Ta da!

Resist Easter Eggs

Easter Egg created by a 4-year old

Last minute posting of a fun and quick Easter project.

I found this project on the wonderful blog: "That Artist Woman"

This art lesson only takes one period. It's great for practising line and patterns with both preschool, elementary and middle school students. Young students can use simple lines (wavy, squiggly, zig-zag, straight, curved, etc.) and older students could research egg decorating traditions from Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Poland, Russia, etc) and find inspiration in order to create more intricate patterns.

Have egg templates ready for younger students or have older kid draw their own large egg shape on heavy white paper. Fill the egg with a variety of lines/designs/patterns using oil pastels- press fairly hard. Encourage them to use lighter colours as they show up much better in the end. Once the design is complete, paint over the entire egg with a darker color of watercolour paint. The paint needs to be fairly liquid in order to resist the oil pastels. Liquid watercolors would work great with this as they are super pigmented.

I like to provide glitter varnish to make the eggs nice and shiny. I just mixed ultra-fine white glitter with a water-based gloss varnish (like Modge Podge). Cut the egg out and that's it! If there's extra time left, you can alos glue the eggs onto another larger sheet of paper and cut out a border, like some of the eggs below.

All the eggs below were done by a wide variety of ages- from 4 years old up to adult!

Dinosaur Fossils

This is a fun art project, particularly if you teach a dinosaur unit. It's a simple wax-resist technique which is *supposed* to mimic the look of dinosaur fossils revealed in an archaeological dig.

Grade 3 students started off by looking through books and doing research on laptops to find 

a skeleton image of a dinosaur they wanted to draw. Draw this skeleton on white paper. 

I demonstrated on the board how it's helpful to start with the head, then sketch in the neck/backbone/vertebrae, then onto the hip bone and tail, then finally adding the arms and legs.

Once the drawing is finished, color in all the bones with a white wax crayon or white oil pastel.

Press nice and hard.

I pre-mixed up a large batch of watered down 'dirt' colored tempera paint. 

Basically brown tempera with a touch of black in it. I like to mix up a bunch of different shades of brown so the students' artwork has some variety.

It's super helpful to do a test batch of paint beforehand to figure out how runny or watered-down the paint needs to be. Too thick and it will just cover over the skeleton completely.

Then paint over the dinosaur skeleton. 

Blot off paint from the skeleton with a tissue, if necessary.

Ta da!