I found this idea on another art blog. I really liked it, so I changed it up a little and tried it out with second grade. It has been very successful. They loved doing it and all of them came out great, as you can see from the photos of a few of them. We drew the nutcraker step by step using basic shapes, outlined it with sharpie and then painted with cake tempera the first week. The second week we went over anything we needed to touch up with sharpie, cut them out, glued them on the black paper and added glitter. I love the project, will definitely do it again.
