5th Grade: Zentangle Animals

This is a project that takes a while, but if students will put the effort in always looks cool at the end!

First, we talk about drawing what we see, not what we think. We practice first with two drawings. One drawing I demonstrate with them, the second I have them do without my help. Students then pick out their own animal picture and apply what they've learned to drawing an animal. There are a lot of choices so they can pick something simple or complex! But they need to draw it the way it looks in the photo - drawing what they see!

This student did not get to add color to his (due to time contraints), but I thought it was a good example of the process. Photograph, draft, and final drawing!!

After students draw their animal, they split the entire drawing up into 6 or more sections. Each section will be filled in with a solid color of paint. After it's dry, students will begin adding patterns to each section. Below are the examples that were chosen to hang in the hallway.

2nd Grade - Formal Balance/Symmetry Butterflies

I used butterflies to teach symmetry/formal balance to my second graders!

Here are the steps! We did this over the course of 2-3 days:

1. Fold 12x18 white paper in half like a card.
2. Draw half of a butterfly.
3. Trace in oil pastel.
4. Fold so that the drawing is on the inside.
5. Rub over drawing with a craft stick - the oil pastel will transfer to the other side.
6. Open up and trace over the transferred oil pastel.
7. Watercolor - make sure students know to make it the same on both sides!
8. Cut out and glue to a piece of colored construction paper.

3rd Grade - Laurel Burch Cats

This is my all time favorite lesson, and not just because I am definitely a cat lady. This lesson always produces BEAUTIFUL results. I split it up into four days:

Day 1 - Introduce the artist - Laurel Burch! Students love her colorful cats.

This is the day I demonstrate how to draw the cat. The students draw along with me. Sometimes, I have papers with the different steps on them that I will put up on the board in case students fall behind.

Students also are to add a lot of patterns to their kitties!! They then trace their pencil lines with permanent marker.

Students may use CRAYON to color the kitties in. I emphasize that they need to color darkly in order for the crayon to show up later. Oil pastel would work to, but my students always end up smearing them all over the place!

**It is important to remind students not to color in their entire cat, JUST the patterns!

Day 2 -

This day I have students start on their frames. Many students are not quite done with the patterns on their cats, so I don't want to force them to paint yet. I tell students to pick a color of paper and make a frame/border using more patterns and a lot of colors! Students that are behind start on their frame after they finish color their cat.

Day 3 - TIME TO PAINT! I go through the first "rainbow" of watercolor with my students, then allow them to paint it on their own, continuing the pattern. Students can paint over the lines of their cats since we will cut them out later.

When students finish, they bring them to the drying rack and work some more on their frames (if they need to).

Day 4 - This day creates a TON of paper scraps. Students have three things to make or cut: a rug, a mouse, and their cat. I cut small rectangles of paper OR put the scrap paper box at the front of the room for students to use as rugs. I also cut small squares for mice. A lot of students don't know how to draw a mouse, so I put a step-by-step on the board for them.

Students glue down in this order:

1. Rug - towards the bottom of the paper
2. Cat - sitting on the rug
3. Mouse - at the cat's feet

My students love their final products and are always antsy to take them home!!

2nd Grade Dutch Cities

For a free draw before (while students were finishing up) I assigned students to draw a gingerbread house. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but gingerbread houses look a lot like Dutch architecture! This is what inspired the Dutch City project.

I showed students pictures of Dutch buildings and talked about how their roofs looked, windows, etc. I also emphasized how close together the buildings are. They really seemed to like the buildings, especially after we connected them to gingerbread houses. After we finished the project, one of my students even brought in a picture of Dutch architecture which he tore out of a magazine. Hooray!

For the project, I cut 12x18 sheets of paper in half (6x18). This provided a long, skinny piece of paper. I had students use their pencils to draw buildings with crazy roofs, lots of windows, etc. with walls super close together. Students then traced their lines with permanent marker (not crayola marker!)

Students colored in their buildings however they liked with crayons. The only parts students were NOT to color in were the sky and the windows. I told students to press kind of hard with their crayons to make the colors smooth and bright.

Students used watercolor to finish these buildings! For the sky, students were to use both blue and purple. Some of the skies look pretty amazing! Students painted the windows in yellow.

With a class size of 36, it is hard to come up with a good project for 2nd grade!! I am very satisfied with how these turned out!

(Two students had to paint on a different day because they were not finished coloring!)

3rd Grade Shape Resist

This is another lesson I stole from my supervising teacher during student teaching. Basically, students traced shapes onto their large sheet of paper. Students were told to overlap all of the shapes and fill the page. Some shapes should even go off the page!

Next, students color in each section (not each shape) with a different colored crayon. This means spaces that overlap are a different color than the rest of the shape. Students were told not to use black.

When students are finished coloring in their shapes, they use black watercolor to paint over the top of the entire thing.

6th Grade Graphic Flowers (Georgia O'Keeffe)

My sixth graders created bright, expressive flowers! Here are the steps we took for each class.

Day 1: Observe Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers and practice drawing our own large flowers. I asked students to make their flowers so big that the petals ran off the page.

Day 2: Background time! I had students choose either warm or cool colors. Students drew circles inside of circles on a sheet of 12x14 paper for the background (reference the final results). Students then did a watercolor wash over the top of their background. If students used warm colors, than the color they chose was warm.

Day 3: Students drew large flowers and put different patterns inside the petals, leaves, etc.

Day 4: Students traced over their lines with oil pastels. With a smaller class, I would have had the students use oil pastels right away. Some of my students used crayons. The next time I do this lesson, I will have everyone use crayons. They just work so much better!

Day 5: Students used watercolor to make their flowers look awesome!

Day 6: Students cut out their flowers. Students folded strips of paper accordian style and glue them to the back of the flower and to the front of the background. This make the flowers POP off of the page. Voila!

Don't these look awesome!?