Cool Blog

Check out this cool art blog at www.deepspacesparkle.com

Great lessons and classroom ideas. I am having a difficult time with the dreaded free draw at the end of class. This blog had a good discussion with a few solutions. I think I may try some white boards!

Snowman

Oil Pastel Snowman

My fourth grade students started out by drawing a one inch border around their paper. Their next step was to use a pencil to draw their snowman close-up. After drawing the snowman, they traced their pencil lines with white glue and let their paper dry until the following week. Once the glue is dry, the students used oil pastels to color in their artwork. The dried glue leaves nice black lines around their shapes in the drawing.

Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderlands

My first graders love doing this artwork. They start out with some triangle tracers of different sizes and trace them using cool colored crayons. Next they add a tree trunk and some branches with the crayons and draw a horizon line. They use cool colored tempera cakes and white to paint their forest. The next week the students use hole punchers and scrap white paper to make their snowflakes.

Winter Scenes

Winter Scenes

My kindergarten classes enjoyed making these winter scenes. They started with a sheet of 12x18 gray paper. They used crayons to draw an outside scene. The next week, they were excited to use a sponge and white paint to make it "snow" on their picture!

Snowflakes

Fancy Snowflakes

I decided to take a little twist on the white snowflake, so we used purple or black paper for our snowflakes to really make them stand out. The students started by using tempera cake paint in blues, whites and purples for the background. While that was drying, they traced lids of different sizes on purple or black paper for their snowflakes. After cutting their snowflakes, they used a silver Sharpie to decorate the flakes. Finally, they glued the snowflakes to their painted background and added some Sharpie work to the background.

Winter Trees

Winter Tree

I took Caitlin Kell's idea for the sky. In fact, these were going to be the fall trees she had on the blog but time got away. My second graders painted the background using the primary colors. The next week, they cut white paper for the bottom and then used brown paint for the tree. The last week, white paint was added to the branches and they hole punched white paper for the flakes.

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.

Art blogs/ Vivid Layers

I added our blog to the list, lots of great blogs on here... Take the time to check this link out!
http://vividlayers.blogspot.com/2010/12/art-teacher-blog-directory.html

Stick snowman ornament

Here is the picture of my stick snowman. I do this project with second grade. I takes 3 classes. The first class we assemble the sticks. There are two short sticks on the back to brace the project, although it seems to hold together without them. If there is time at the end of the first class, we make the star. Second class paint, third class decorate. The smile is made from pre-cut rug yarn, but you could use yarn that you cut or paper (hole punched "coal" would be cute). This project is a bit difficult (assembling the sticks) but I have had many positive comments from my parents.

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.