Owls

Third grade made Owls for the fundraiser activity. Again, excellent results! Sharpie and water color crayons.....

Cubist Hands

This is a neat lesson to do with your upper elementary students that covers shades and tints, color mixing, and Art Appreciation. Students trace their hand 2 times onto a 12'' square piece of gray bogus paper, once from the bottom, and once from a side. Using a ruler, trace 3 lines from the top to the bottom, and 3 times side to side. Don't forget to slant the lines a little. Now-very important- outline everything with a black sharpie. Begin painting. EVERYTIME YOU HIT A LINE, CHANGE  COLORS. You may place the same colors kater/corner. When all the painting is complete, let dry completely, re-outline with sharpies, and  make the lines dark and even. They are very colorful, and you may wish to limit the paintings to certain colors of your choice.

Compass Rose

Whenever possible I like to correlate with the classroom teachers on projects. Third grade created a Compass Rose. We used rulers, circle templates, sharpies and colored pencils. The children absolutely loved this project.  The results were quite impressive.

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.

Food Color Wheel

Food Color Wheels

Materials:


Color Wheel Handouts
Pencil
9x9 white paper
circle templates/paper plates
red, yellow, blue tempera paint (for mixing)
brushes
water
scissors
glue
card stock paper/posterboard/black constructions paper

Steps:

1. Begin by asking children to draw a banana and an apple, which they will paint yellow and red. (For younger children: pre-draw fruit shapes that they may paint in)

2. Then they may paint a number of blue dots, which will represent blueberries.

3. Ask children to draw a lime, then ask what color it should be. Instruct them in mixing green from yellow and blue, so they may paint the lime green.

4. Do the same for an orange (yellow+red), and a plum or cluster of grapes (blue+red).

5. Once painted fruits have dried, cut them out.

6. Cut a circle out of card stock/black paper.

7. Beginning with primary colors, glue "fruit" around the plate according to their colour to create a color wheel

SOLs 3.4, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4

Square 1 Fundraiser

One of the schools where I teach does the Square 1 fundraiser. I thought I would post a few ideas that I used this year with the classes. In third grade we did cats using the art of Laurel Burch. The students enjoyed looking at her work and discussing the cats. We then created cats of our own. I emphasized using lots of patterns in their designs. I thought they came out great! I think you could do the cats with any grade leve and still have success.

Leaf Prints

I like to do this leaf printing project in the fall. I ask students to bring in leaves and I bring in some from home. We classify each leaf. With third graders, I talk about mixing the paint right on the leaf to get intermediate colors. I use tempera paint cakes and tell my students to keep the paint on the dry side. Paint the side of the leaf with the veins, turn the painted leaf over onto paper and rub with a paper towel to get a good print. Lift the leaf off.

Fall Leaves

I did this project with 3rd grade. We made leaves with marker outlines and veins, and then used water to make the marker "bleed" (the cheaper the paper the better it works).

Warm and Cool Colors

Warm and Cool Leaves

I do this lesson with third graders after reviewing warm and cool colors. They use leaf tracers and outline them with black Sharpie and make veins in their leaves. The leaves in their drawing have to be warm colors and the background has to be cool colors. (this example shows some warm spots in the background but in person it doesn't look that way!) Students use oil pastels for this and the artwork always turns out vivid and stunning!

Robert Delaunay Art

Color Explosion

My third graders are working on these after making a color wheel. I got this idea from the book Making Amazing Art. These turn out great and gives them a chance to work with colors.