Defying Gravity

 This year School 2's 3rd Graders are going to DEFY GRAVITY!  

 I got this concept courtesy of another blogger and decided to run with it!

I started out the students with an OuterSpace PowerPoint.  The students were really into space and had a ton to say about it!  

The students then got their papers and were told to draw five circles with oil pastels- some big, some small, some off the edge of the paper etc.  These would become their planets. 

 While looking at the planets, we all decided that no planet was just one color so the students were encouraged to blend the oil pastels and use multiple colors in all the planets.  Some students added rings for Saturn.  The students painted black watercolor over their paper and I came around and sprayed blue and violet liquid watercolor onto their papers (because even space isn't just black)

The following week I read the students a book about space and then the students drew their rockets.  I made up a step by step space ship drawing guide for the students that were less confident.  I stressed that the spaceship is made up of simple shapes such as ovals and triangles so if you can draw them, you can draw a spaceship.  While the students were drawing I called a few students at a time to the back table to paint glitter onto their background.  This would represent far off stars.

The students used watercolor pencils to color in their rockets.  Using the projector we compared realistic rockets to cartoon rockets.  The difference was the shading.  I demonstrated to the students some shading techniques.  

Tissue Box Monsters

TISSUE BOX MONSTERS

Created by 1st Graders at School No. 2 

This school year I was really looking forward to a new fun art lesson that would be in the Halloween spirit.  While cruising the internet one day I came across the great idea to take ordinary tissue boxes and turn them into Monsters!  So I got right on it and got the troops started on collecting Tissue Boxes.  Luckily they all came through and I was able to do the project!  

To prepare the tissue boxes, I painted them myself with acrylic paint.  I recommend this especially if doing them with a young grade like first.  It's a messy process to paint the boxes and some require two coats to hide the patterns plus it allows for the kids to spend more time creating their Monsters!!