Holiday Fun Projects

Here are a few examples of some holiday collage I have done with 2nd and 3rd grade in the past. I usually give them a blue paper for the sky and half a green or white for the snow or grass to start the composition
-then paint trees in foreground that go from the bottom of the paper to the top. medium trees in the middleground, and tiny trees on the "horizon line" for the background
-then they can use paper scraps, markers, paint, and oil pastel to create an original composition of whatever the theme is, which must tell a story. There have to be characters, conflict, and or conflict resolution, and overlapping shown in the picture. This student was quite expressive with the sad turkey being hunted, but the hunter creates his overlapping and conflict!

This student created a holiday snowball fight. I love the little guy in the background launching snowballs from the igloo!! students used blue colored pencil to shade the snowmen,and black oil pastel to shade the trees.
Here is an indian collage with colored paper scraps and yarn. Students had to make large and small teepees on the horizon line to show depth in the background

Here are some fun ideas that I found on the internet. How about this pilgrim squash!!
I love this turkey basket made from a brown paper sack for the base, paper plates for the head, wings and tail, then colored paper, sequins, and paint for the feathers, and paint for the wings and head



This Thankful tree would be good for a classroom. The pot could also be painted like a pilgrim hat, black with a band or ribbon with a buckle on it. These adorable squirrels are made from walnuts with felt, and goobly eyes. They are a hide the nut game for students to trick their classmates with quick hands!
I just love this plump paper sack turkey with his slender spoon head!! The spoon head just does it for me! Made with a brown lunch sack stuffed with newspaper, and decorated with colored paper and felt, and of course the ever essential craft necessity; goobly EYES!

Spooky Houses

Okay here is a little bit of crafty fun! This year 4th and 5th grade made these adorable 3D spooky houses! It was so much fun and a friend of mine gave me the idea to use them to make Christmas Gingerbread houses as well. Maybe we will do that next year! I posted step by step instructions on the oragami part. For the decorations, we started with coloring the background (sky, grass, front of house,details of things in the windows) for the first class period so we could store them flat and not have to make space for 400 mini houses. They also took a small triangle and glued it on the front of the top tier which will become the top roof next time. The second class period, they taped a strip of black paper folded in half to the triangle to form the roof. then little strips to the second and first story roof. They made fences, and added little pop up ghosts, pumpkins, scarecrows, bats, trees, etc. with scrap paper.

First fold paper in half and draw two lines, an inch from the side and half way up the paper with the FOLD at the BOTTOM

Cut the lines and fold the flap up flush with the top of the folded paper

Draw two more lines, an inch from the edge of the flap, and half way up the flap

cut those lines and fold that piece up flush with the top of the folded paper

Open the entire paper and pop up the three middle parts pushing the sides inward until it looks like this

You should have three little steps

glue another piece of cardstock behind the oragami paper for the backing, and let the coloring begin!!

Jazz Culture

A few years ago I did this project with my students to learn about the Jazz culture in New Orleans. We recieved quite a few students from New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina and I like to integrate music and different cultures in with our lessons. We listened to lots of Jazz music and talked about the different instruments and veiwed many photos of the French Quarter.
Students could either draw a scene from the French Quarter or a Jazz instrument. We talked about how to draw the different architecture with balconies, storm shudders on the windows, long sidewalks,city lights, and streets. Students drew first with pencil, then painted with tempra paint, then used oil pastels to outline and accent their paintings. Students could also add little people dancing and stars, and use 3D o's to attach them so they pop up a little.

Castles

I don't usually like doing projects like this where all students have such a similar outcome, but this was a lesson on using watercolor paint for kinder and first graders. They are learning about mixing colors, so they had to use a variety of different colors on their castles and sky. We are also learning about details, and backgrounds. We drew the knights and horses on foil. Students looked at lots of books of knights and castles to get ideas. Many of the students had fun adding sharks and gators to their moat and dragons in the sky.
We learned the words,
moat
castle
knight
Middle Ages

Outer Space

Last year my students were learning about space so we made these outer space pictures. We talked about how to use "value" to make the planets look like spheres instead of circles. They had to blend them from dark to light. They also had to have planets overlapping, and planets that ran off the edge of the paper to make an interesting composition.

After they colored their planets, they drew things like astronauts, comets, and space ships. We used 3Do's to stick them on so they would pop off the page a little.

Finally, we used tooth brushes to flick white paint on the background for the stars.

Fruit Plate Still Lifes

For this project, I bought real fruit and put it on each table on a paper plate. We talked about how to draw the fruit overlapping by starting with the closest fruit first. I told them to reach out their hand and whatever fruit would touch their finger first would be the one to start with. Then, when drawing the next fruit, the line would start on the first fruit even if they weren't really touching. We talked about how everyone's drawings will look different because of point of veiw. We talked about how the plate would start on one fruit and end on another and you wouldn't see a big circle for a plate unless you were drawing the picture while hanging from the ceiling. Then we practiced blending colors from dark to light. I put a lamp on each table and they had to draw little ovals where the "shiney's" (reflections) were. Those were to be colored white. Here are some finished products.

"Art Rocks" Guitars

My theme this year is "Art Rocks" so in order to go along with my theme we created guitars to go along with our study of the color wheel. 2nd and 3rd grade drew guitars and had to color them with oil pastels and illustrate the primary, secondary, and intermediate colors mixing together.
After studying the color wheel for a few weeks we did a color mixing excercise using oil pastels to blend analogus colors from red down the color wheel all the way to red-violet.

Then we looked at electric guitars and talked about the different parts and shapes

When they started their drawings I told them to make the neck of the guitar stop in the middle of the paper so their guitars would fit on the paper. Then I showed them how to make two different body shapes, but they could choose their own body shape or make up their own.

We looked at a real electric guitar and talked about how you can only see one edge at a time from any point of veiw and how to draw the edge so it looks 3D

Then they colored them with oil pastel and drew shapes in the background such as stars and music notes

Second graders splatter painted their backgrounds with neon paint

Third graders created a background by paper weaving and some of them splatter painted too if they finished early

We used 3D O's to stick the stars on so they would pop up off the paper and add a 3D element to the finished product. I also let a few classes add rainbow colored yarn to the strings if they finished early