Quick Clay Owls

Quick Clay Owls
This could be done with K 1 or 2 after reading Owl Moon or a similar owl book.

This is from the blog 4 Crazy Kings:


Start with a ball (any clay will work)

Smoosh to make circle

Use marker cap to make UUUUUU's on belly

Fold sides in

Fold top down - pinch ears a bit

Use marker cap to make eyes

Use butter knife or similar to make beak -
Finally you can play with a bit by smooshing sides a bit to make owl more round.

Fire and glaze. (You could also use oil pastels/crayon and ink instead of glaze.(See OZ KIDZ ARTZ)

Fall Still Life

I did this lesson with second graders. They created their piece by looking at a still life of a pumpkin and 3 gourds. There was a different arrangement of pumpkins and gourds on each table. We painted paste papers (1 orange, 1/2 green and 1/2 yellow) in one class while they were finishing up another project, then used them to cut out the shapes for our still life. They then added all the details of the pumpkins and gourds with crayons. If they had time they could color the background. They all came out really different and the paste paper added a nice texture. The kids loved painting them and combing through a design!

What's in a line?

Contour Line Drawings

My second graders were reviewing types of lines. I took out a bunch of scrap paper and they searched for interesting shapes. They used a glue stick to put the shapes on their 9x12 paper. Then they followed the contour of their shapes with a marker.

Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella



This project is based on the book Bigfoot Cinderrrrrella by Tony Johnston. We used 1 inch wide paper strips and glued them together. We used clothespins to hold them together to dry while we were building. We experimented with both gluing them onto a piece of paper and also just hanging them up from the ceiling with no background paper. Another fun project that was pretty simple to do, if you used clothes pins... aka "art clamps".

Cloudy with a Chance of .....

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a children's book written by  Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett. We had a great time making a project based on this book. Our project ended up being Cloudy with a Chance of Snacks.  We used crayons, watercolors, glue and various snack food items.

Woven Chinese Dragons

Materials:
9x12 White paper
Black tempera cake paint or watercolors
Oil pastels
6x9 black paper
Book: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier

Day 1

1. Woven Chinese Dragons! Second grade learns about China in March and April.
2. Read: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier. Talk about the animals that make up the dragon: ox, fish, horse, serpent, bird.
2. Artists designed and colored two sheets of paper- one with dragon scales and the other with an abstract design- all in oil pastels. Talk about abstract shapes. They start from a real object, but the lines are very messy!
3. Then they painted over these papers in black tempera/watercolor.

Day 2
4. Next the artists cut strips from the scales page and wove it into the other page to create the dragon's body.
5. The artists learned about symmetry to create their dragon's heads that they cut from black paper and then designed with oil pastels.
6. The artists cut necks and tails and then colored them as well before attaching them to their dragon.
7. The artists cut out and colored two sets of people legs- just like the ones that carry and dance the Chinese dragons!
8. Finally, the artists can write their names in Chinese to finish their projects.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

It's Dr. Seuss's birthday this week. I read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to my second grade. We painted one piece of white paper with bright stripes. We then drew a fish with Sharpie and painted it red or blue. After they dried we cut them out and glued them on the striped paper.

Snowflakes

This is a quick, fun and easy project I found on another blog. The kids loved doing them and it was easily finished in one day. I would think it would work for 2nd through 4th grade. I used construction paper crayons for the drawn flakes, but oil pastels would work also.

Winter Cardinal

I found this from another art blog:

Winter Cardinal

1.Make cardboard wing templates for students to trace to keep the scale of the bird from starting out too small. The rest of the drawing was done with step-by-step instructions on the board. Describe the wing as needing to be tilted a bit, a “shark fin” was added on top, and a belly below. The black face looks a bit like half of a butterfly, and the beak extends directly to the right of it. A tail is added below, along with feet. The branch is behind the feet so it’s lines jump over the feet and tail.

2. After the drawing is done, it needs to be traced with a thin black marker.

3. Lastly, all except the snow is colored in with oil pastels.

Nutcracker

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.

Mosaic Penguin

What you'll need:
1 sheet light blue construction paper
Construction paper: black, white, orange, and red
Pen
Glue stick
Black marker
Pattern: http://crafts.kaboose.com/mosaic_penguin_template.pdf
How to make it:
Place pattern on top of the light blue construction paper and trace it with a pen. This will create an indent in the blue paper.Add a simple line behind the penguin's body, just a few inches above the penguin's foot. This is the land.
Tear white and black construction paper into strips, and then tear the strips into squares.
Remove pattern. Apply glue with glue stick to small areas of the blue paper, using the indentations as a guide. Start with the "land" area first, pressing white paper scraps in place.
Still working in small areas (so that your glue doesn't dry before you get to it) press on all the black paper areas. Finish with the white area in the center of the penguin.
Tear or cut out a triangle beak from the orange paper and glue on to the face. Use black marker to add two eyes and eyebrows. Tear or cut out a bow tie from red paper and glue in place under the beak.

Buffalo Paintings

I got this lesson from another art teacher's website, but I added the Native American symbol frame to it. I tried to squeeze it all into 2 days, so I did the background and buffalo on the first day, and then cut the buffalo out and glued it all together and added the frame the second day. I also read the book "Buffalo Woman" by Paul Goble on the second day (it's a Native American legend about how the Buffalo Nation and Native Americans became "related").

Owl Drawings

Vocabulary:

Line, pattern, convex, concave, nocturnal

Materials

Owl Moon

12x18 white drawing paper

black sharpies

owl images and books

colored pencil/watercolor

Procedure

The students will draw a V on the page upper center, add circles on each side of V, add smaller circles inside those and color in for eyes, close v off with wavy half circle at top, add V to bottom of eyes to make beak, add zigzag lines around eyes and over top but not to touch the beak, add 2nd and 3rd row of zigzag feathers, draw to curved lines(concave and convex) from near beak down to make wings not to touch at lower end of page, add outer layer to create wings on both of those lines, add feet at junction of wings near bottom of page, fill in belly with little v's for feathers or other feather like shapes, add branch and tree to complete, have students add any other details they want. The students can then add watercolor, or crayon

Fall Trees

Here are the fall trees I shared at the meeting. I do this with 2nd grade, and it is a 3 day project.

Day 1 - paint the sunset background (we talk about mixing the primary colors)

Day 2 - paint the tree and add highlights and shadows with black and white

Day 3 - Add the leaves using crayons and texture plates

They make the hall look nice and bright!

Apple Basket Weaving

I did this activity with second grade. They got a strip of brown paper and had to mark with a ruler the lines for the basket. After cutting their lines, they were ready to weave. When the basket was finished, they cut the corners off the bottom of the basket to make it rounded. The basket was glued to a piece of 12x18 white paper. At first I used real apples and paint, but it didn't work out so well so I eventually had the students use crayons to draw their apples. You could also use tracers or have them cut apples out of construction paper. Note: the weaving takes longer than expected!!!

Fall Leaves

Second Graders traced leaves on manila paper. Then they took chalk pastels and put color around the edges. Placing the leaf on their white paper, a tissue was used to remove the pastel. A leaf outline is left on the white paper. After overlapping and doing this procedure several times, the students drew veins on their leaves they traced and glue them somewhere on their paper.

Season Wheels...

Second grade was busy making season wheels. We talked about the seasons, what they looked like, what they felt like, and things you could do during that season. They then drew one specific tree in each section of the wheel. They went on to make each tree look as it would in each of the four seasons. We attached the wheel to a piece of paper with a paper fastener.

Second Grade - Shapes

This is a fun lesson that I recently did with second grade. They chose 4 different markers and then chose 4 corresponding crayons. They were able to use any geometric shape they chose. I had them draw the shape and then echo it with the other three markers. They then colored each shape in. They repeated the process over and over learning about overlapping in the process. Great results and they loved doing it.

Protractor Design

Protractor Art
I have a class set of protractors and I did this quick art activity with my second graders. They traced the protractor over and over using markers. When the tracing was complete, they used crayons to color in the new shapes that were created. I used this as a first week activity to get them thinking about art.

Chinese Dragon Puppets

Lindsay Treadwell presented a lesson on Chinese Dragon Puppets. She does this with second grade. Fun project!