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!

Cheery Rainbows with Pop-out Flowers

This is a very Spring-like art project, but I figure I'd post it now in time for St. Paddy's Day (rainbow-related and all). I found this to be a perfect project for Grade 1 students (6 years old); slightly challenging with the pop-up flowers but not frustrating-ly so.

Start off by teaching and/or reviewing the colors found in a rainbow: ROY G BIV

On a regular white sheet of paper, landscape format, students draw/color a rainbow using wax crayons. 

I reminded the kids to press fairly hard so they'd get nice bright colors.

I had pre-cut pieces of green construction paper (about 3-4 inches high) to fit along the bottom of the paper. I demonstrated how to cut 'zig-zag/triangles' grass for confident students, or, a simpler 'fringe' for kids that aren't so good with manipulating scissors. Glue the grass paper to the bottom of the rainbow sheet.

On heavy weight white paper, students drew 3 large, simple flowers and colored them with wax crayons. 

Markers would also look nice. Cut these out.

I showed each students (called them up one-by-one) and showed them how to make a small paper spring (a thin, short strip of heavyweight white paper folded accordian style). We made them step-by-step together, then they went back to their tables and made the third one by themselves. Glue these to the bottom of each flower and then glue the other end of the spring to the green grass. I encouraged students to go back and add details to the background (sun, clouds, insects, etc, etc....)

Ta da!

Shadow Portraits

These charming 'portraits with shadows' were made by Gr.3 students. 

I found the idea at the elementary art blog: "An Art Room Filled with Fauves". 

The supplies you'll need are:

• white drawing paper
• strips (1-2") of colored paper
• black paper (for the shadow)
• colored paper (for the background)
• glue stick, scissors, pencils
• colored pencils or markers

 So start off with the kids drawing a full figure person- you could make it a self-portrait lesson, 

or kids might research a famous historical person (to link with Social Studies), whatever. 

I gave the kids free reign to choose whomever they liked. 

Draw this lightly in pencil, then colour with media of your choice; we used colored pencils. 

Carefully cut out the figure. Place upside-down onto black paper and slowly trace 

with a light colored pencil. This will be the shadow- cut out.

Decide where is the best placement for the shadow- I found it works slightly above or below to 

either the left or the right hand side. 

For the border, I pre-cut a bunch of construction paper using a paper cutter- it went really fast. These were about 1 inch thick or so. Kids will cut these into squares and glue them around their background paper to create a simple border.

Ta da!

Volcanoes

Grade 3 students were learning about volcanoes in their Science unit so we made illustrations of them in Art. We talked about some of the more famous volcanic eruptions such as Vesuvius (Pompeii), Mount St. Helens (USA),  and my favourite, the unpronounceable Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland- the one that threw tons of volcanic ash into airspace over Europe that lasted 6 days). 

Even the iconic Mount Fuji in Japan is a volcano (last eruption in 1708).

There's actually a new movie coming out in February about Pompeii (I'm super excited about it as it's starring JON SNOW from Game of Thrones (for any GOT fans out there)

So students had already researched volcanoes, so they looked through books for images to inspire them. We talked about volcanoes main featured such as the lava, ash cloud, and the crater at the top. 

On black construction paper, students sketched out their volcano first in pencil, then passed over the lines with a thick line using a black wax crayon (you could also use oil pastels).

Then they were coloured in using chalk pastels- this medium was especially useful for creating 

the ash cloud as it's nice and soft and blend-able.

Ta da!

"What Does the Fox Say?" Drawings

This was a fun 'extra' project perfect for the last week of school before the December holidays. It's based on the viral video/song "What Does the Fox Say?" by the hilarious Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. 

The tune was so catchy and cute and the kids were singing it all the time -so I thought I could make a fun art project out of it. I chatted with the kids about what a fox does sound like (because honestly, who really knows?! I sure didn't! haha). Then we watched videos of actual fox sounds (there's alot of Yotube- wow- it's a really disturbing sound! haha)

So I demo-ed how to do some simple fox drawings after discussing fox features (pointy nose, distinctive fur markings, fluffy tail, etc.) I realized it's actually quite tricky to draw a fox so it doesn't look like a cat or a weird cat/raccoon/dog hybrid ;)

Kids drew these in pencil, outlined with a black marker and then coloured (crayons, watercolours or coloured pencils all work well). Then they had to add a speech bubble of what they thought a 'fox says'. 

Warning- the song will be in your head ALL DAY if you do this project!!