Fall'n in Love With Leaf Printing

This week my 3rd and 4th grade students kicked off the first week of Fall by making leaf prints!! These leaves came off a sycamore tree and have a sort of fuzz on the back that soaks up the watercolors and allows them to blend beautifully! 

I let them paint it however they wanted. This student painted the sky on hers and asked me to take a picture of the leaf  against the sky to see the camouflage effect! 

We used the crayola 16 color box which is my absolute fav right now! 

 We tried it with other leaves too

Students learned about craftsmanship and we talked about keeping their paper background nice and clean without smudges.  

 My younger grades made crayon resist paintings and leaf rubbings with multiple colors. We are ready for Fall and cooloer temps in Houston!

Fall Projects

This Fall we have been busy studying about the seasons, line, shape, and texture. Below are some crayon rubbings the students made. They made their own pumpkins, and face pieces out of cardboard for the rubbings. Then they decorated the foreground and background

We made these haunted houses silhouettes with watercolor, and black tempra paint. Students practice having control of their brush for fine details.

I found this idea online at www.ourartlately.blogspot.com

We got out the chalk pastels with second and third grade to create these pumpkin patches. Students had to overlap pumpkins, shade with analogus colors, and overlap the leaves. They loved this and they came out beautiful!

We have been learning alot about pumpkins and why they are special. I have read them LOTS of pumpkin books and we even tasted pumpkin bread and I told them all to try IHOP’s pumpkin pancakes! I have been indulging in Starbuck’s pumpkin spice latte every Tuesday. I just LOVE the Fall!!

students loved making our 3d spooky houses, and they were very creative this year.

kinder and first grade drew and painted scarecrows. They thought it was funny that scarecrows don’t really work. I told them it was a symbol of harvest and students learned about how this time of year is so important to farmers and how people celebrate harvest all over the world.! We looked at the painting Garden Scarecrow by Erin Dertner

The students drew a scarecrow with crayons, drew the background, then colored the sky with fall coloed tempra paint, for a harvest sunset. They drew different kinds of hats, shirts, and decorations. Some were in a pumpkin patch, others in a corn field, or both! After the paint dried, they went over some of the lines with oil pastels to brighten them up a bit.

I know the lesson below isn’t Fall, but the kids have had so much fun with it. It is the easiest lesson too. We first studied Op Art. We looked at many examples online. Then the students drew these spheres

after they draw the spheres, they create a checker board background using a ruler

We extended the lesson to add them on our radial designs. Here is the lesson I posted last year for that… http://elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/2009/12/radial-design.html