Snow Birds

I read the book Snow Birds to the students.  We then created birch trees out of music sheets since these are to help decorate for the winter concert.  Bubble wrap and Q-tips were used to create some snowy texture and the students created watercolor resists to cut out their bird shapes!

Rockin' Penguins

This was another lesson inspired by the winter concert this year!  What says winter concert more than some cute penguins playing electric guitars?  So my second graders got to work!

Step 1:  The penguin

For sake of time, I made templates for the outline of the penguin and the arms.  The students traced these on their paper but were still responsible for drawing the inside lines (defining the black and white areas & the face)  

The students then painting the black and orange area.  We let the white paper be the white of the penguin's body but you could always choose to have them paint this part or make the penguin more realistic looking by adding some grey shadows in the white.  

* The arms are done separately so that when the entire picture gets assembled the arms can be arranged to appear as though they are holding the guitar

Reflective City Scenes

During this lesson my third grade students explored warm vs. cool colors in their watercolor painting backgrounds.  I gathered the students around my demo table to show them how to blend colors without puddles of water or dry brushstrokes everywhere.  I had the students fold their paper in half first to establish their horizon line.

Snowflake Snowmen

This year the Third Grade Winter Concert was titled, Snow Day so in spirit, I decided to have the third graders design Snowmen out of Snowflakes!  

The first step was designing the backgrounds.  For inspiration, I read the students the book Snow Bear then the students began to draw on white paper with white crayon.  I encouraged the students to press hard and color anything they wanted to be white.

Next we did a watercolor resist by painting Cool Colors over the entire paper and voila!  Their snowy scenes appeared!  (some more than others!)

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.