Remembrance Day Poppy Collages

In Canada, where I live, Remembrance Day is observed every year on November 11. It honors the more than 2 million Canadians who have served, and remembers those who died in the line of duty.

All schools hold meaningful assemblies each year and our school is no exception.

These collages will be put on display for our assembly.

I found the idea for this idea on Instagram on the account: @art_studio_arbuz. It's an art studio for children in Russia. Russian children's art is very advanced- I would love to learn from a Russian art teacher! I was immediately mesmerized by their gorgeous collages and love the very Eastern European look to them.

Grade 4-6 students painted (tempera) two sheets on construction paper. One was in shades or red and the other in shades of green. This took one period.  Once dry, they cut out stylized poppy shapes and glued three layers together. Then they cut out stems and leaves from the green paper and carefully decided their composition on black paper. These look STUNNING in the hallway. 

Some finished artwork:

 

Mixed Media Insect Drawings

This is a really cool lesson using transparency sheets, sharpies and paint pens layered over a tissue paper collage background.

I saw the lesson on the fabulous Talley Street Artists Instagram account.

I taught this project to a mixed class of Grade 4-6. They were all successful with it.

First class: create a tissue paper collage using watered down glue and tissue paper onto cardstock (it should match the size of the transparency film). Let dry. These curled up ALOT during the drying process and was a huge pain both flattening them and trimming them!! Allocate time for that.

I had pre printed out a few sheets of a variety of insect clip art. Students chose one and traced a variety of sizes on insects onto the transparencies using sharpie. They were so excited to be able to trace, lol.

Then they chose three paint pens and added lines and patterns, dots and outlines.

Then we taped them onto their tissue paper background using double sided clear tape.

They look so cool!! This project's a keeper :) It took two 80 minute classes in total.

 

Jim Dine 4 Hearts Art Project

Here's another fast and easy Valentine's art project with an art history component. 

I saw this on an Instagram reel from @scholtenart. I altered the last time a bit.

This was the first project I did with a new set of Grade 4-6 students. Honestly, it was easy for alot of the older kids, but the boys, especially, needed help and reminders with cutting and gluing and all those fine motor skills that boys sadly seem to lack compared to girls. This took my classes one 40 minute period to complete. 

This is the first year I've tries tempera paint sticks and they are fantastic! It's like drawing with a really slick, smooth, colorful glue stick!

I pre-cut heavy white paper into squares (9" x 9") and then pre-cut coloured photocopy paper into squares that would fit onto that in 4th (I can't really explain math, lol)

Students covered the white paper with patterns using paint sticks.

Then they chose two squares of a colour, stacked them and cut out a heart shape. 

Review positive and negative space.

Glue stick these onto the background like so. Then we used black and white pencil crayons to add some shading and highlights to the hearts. 

I love how fun and colourful these turned out!