6th Grade: Crayon Batik

I'm starting this project with one of my 6th grade classes this week! I'm going to have each student draw something that is a plant (flowers, leaves, trees, etc.). For my example, I drew The Tree of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings. This project has really great potential if students can follow directions well!

Step One: Plan out/draw the plant on a 12x12 piece of paper. I used white construction paper. The paper, of course, needs to be white in order for this to work!

Step Two: Color in the design. In order for this to work, you will need to press hard with your crayons to create thick, waxy layers. Anything that you want to make black, you should not color in - anything left "blank" will end up being black! For some reason, I wanted my tree to be white. I don't need to tell you why that was difficult!

Here is my completed coloring.

Step Three: Crinkle that paper! CAREFULLY! Otherwise it might rip on the edges. I've done it a few different ways.

• Option 1: Crinkle and uncrinkle the paper around eight times.
  
• Option 2: Crinkle the paper vertically, horizontally, diagonally, opposite-diagonally, etc.
  
  Basically, just crinkle it a lot.

Step Four: Smooth that paper out to prep for painting!

Step Five: Mix black tempera paint with a small amount of water and paint the entire paper with it! Crinkling the paper creates cracks in the waxy surface created by the crayons. The black paint mixture will fill in the cracks - batik! I really saturate the top to make sure I don't miss any spots.

Step Six: With a paper towel dab the excess paint off of the paper. Do not wipe it off! If you wipe it off, it will smear black paint all over your pretty picture! Dab, dab, DAB! There should be no pooling of paint by the time you are done dabbing.

Step Seven: Set your picture out to dry! You're done! Gaze with wonder at the beauty you've created!

Tree of Life: 6th Grade

In sixth grade, we studied movement. I have always thought that Klimt's Tree of Life looks like it's moving! My students agreed and we set to each creating our own Tree of Life. Students used tempera paint and oil pastels to create these beautiful, unnatural trees!

I wish this student had been able to finish! He was working very steadily and doing an amazing job!

African Sunsets: 3rd Grade

Third graders experimented with mixing colors on a paper rather than in a dish. I've seen similar projects online saying this project deals with value, but we did not emphasize this. Our focus was on contrast, shape, and painting techniques!

Here is my smaller example:

Below are the pieces created by some of my students! They did an excellent job!

3rd Grade: Underwater Scratchboards

With the third grade, I did two scratchboard projects. The first one we used crayons on tagboard. Students were to press hard with the crayons and create vertical lines. I told students to use any color but black. After the vertical lines were finished, students used black to cover everything up. We used wooden, pointed sticks to scratch different types of lines into the black and the colorful under-coloring was revealed!!

That lesson lasted a week. It served as a warm up for a bigger, more exciting scratchboard lesson that lasted two weeks.

Day 1: Students color vertical lines in rainbow order on a piece of tagboard. Our tagboard was cut to the size of about half a sheet of paper. Like before, students were to press hard with the crayons. I listed rainbow order on the chalkboard and included pink. (25 minutes)

During a prep period, I painted black tempera mixed with hand soap over the top of the colored tagboard. It is very important that students remember to write their names. Once they are painted, they are indistinguishable!

Day 2: I displayed about 20 pictures of fish/underwater life. I handed out computer/free draw paper and had students draw ONE creature from each photo unless stated otherwise. I explained that they would use these drawings on their scratchboards. Students were told they would not have to use every fish/creature they drew, just the ones that they liked best. (50 minutes)

Day 3: I gave students scrap paper the same size as the scratchboard and told them to draw what they were going to put on their scratchboards. I stressed to have some big creatures, medium creatures, and small creatures. I showed my students an example (that I did myself!) to further explain what I meant. Students also were told to put a lot of patterns on their fish and other sea animals. (25 minutes).

Day 4: Finally, students were able to scratch their pictures!! I laid down newspaper, as this can get messy. Here are the results from two of my third grade classes!!

Beautiful, expressive results!!

First Grade Dogs

Yikes! I came to my second school and realized nearly too late that the classes here had already finished their faces!! This is because I see these classes twice a week and the others only once. I had to come up with something fast!!

Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle, I was able to find a cute project quickly. The first day, the students drew their dogs. I used the ELMO to show my drawing magnified on the projector screen. This worked for most of them; others I may need to sit next to me next time in order to make sure they are able to follow along. The dogs turned out so cute!

The next class day, I had the students finish up their dogs. While they were finishing, I had a group of three at a time come to a station and paint a second paper half blue and green. This is for the sky and the ground. I used tempera paint for this. I thank my summer experience at TLZ as an assistant art teacher, because otherwise I would not have been as effective at showing students how to hold a paint brush (Thank you, Amy!) I did not get through all of the students, so I will have an activity next week and pull those aside that have not finished painting yet.

I can't wait to see and share the final projects!