Tangrams

This was a fun project that our other teachers did with the kids on a "Fun Friday." The results were too cute and artistic to not post here as well. Lots of fun combos of triangles!

Week 26: Easter Egg animals

This was the week before Easter Break, so I had the kids make animals out of eggs. I got the idea from Martha Stewart and other places that used real eggs that had been blown. But we had a bag full of the colorful plastic eggs, and no staff of 10 to blow and dye the 100 eggs I would need!

There are any number of animals you can make out of eggs. The more traditional ones are chicks/ducks from yellow eggs, lambs from pink/orange eggs (with cotton balls), pigs, doves, and bunnies from blue or purple eggs. Then you can make bees from yellow eggs, hippos from purple eggs, bears and puppies from brown eggs, and frogs from green eggs.

All you need is some scrap construction paper, cotton balls, felt, sequins, feathers, permanent markers, pom-poms and any other crafty scraps. We used white glue for some parts, but I would advise hot-glue or tacky-glue.

The kids seemed to really like the idea of this craft, but the younger kids had a bit of a hard time with the glue not sticking fast enough. Overall, a very fun project!

Week 21: Year of the Tiger drawings

As a nod to Chinese New Year and the Year of the Tiger 2010, I decided to do a directed drawing project. As for the actual Tiger subject and technique I was inspired by this artist blog and her really cute tiger:

http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2008/07/rousseau-tiger-drawing.html

I have had luck with doing very targeted drawing exercises with the kids and this seemed like a good fit. Plus, I needed something simple to prepare since my home office where I plan and get projects figured out is in the final throws of being renovated and my files are being chased around the house.


The materials are simple: paper, crayons and/or oil pastels and markers. I talked briefly about the 12-animal cycle of the Chinese New Year and showed them some real photos of tigers. Then I showed them on the board each step: 1. draw a circle 2. draw eyes 3. draw the nose 4. draw the cheeks etc.



Most kids did a great job following directions and I encouraged them to fill the paper with color since many like to rush through things and get done. The best results came from careful drawing and making the lines dark enough so that after the color is applied the lines still show through.

These Cool Cats will make a "purrfect" addition to our walls for our open house next month! I was born in the year of the Tiger, so this is especially close to my heart.

Week 11: Cutout Turkeys

Being the last week of art lessons before Thanksgiving, I decided to "trot" out some good old fashioned paper turkeys. This was also an easy project to shoehorn in after getting some kids to finish their Thanksgiving quilt squares from last week. I did similar, but different, turkeys for the K-2nd grade room and the 3-4th grade room. I think the younger-kid-version is a cuter idea (my part of the project-not the kid's part), but the work that all the kids did ended up adorable and full of personality.


For the younger kids I cut red paper plates in half to use as a base, and then had them trace/cut handprints for the back feathers. Then many used a foot tracing for the neck. Some circles for head and eyes, triangle for beak, and some accordian folded legs round out this "feast" of cuteness.


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For the older kids, I had them use a black background and lots of different geometric shapes for the feathers and head etc. In hindsight I would have had them do handprints as well. I am always amazed at how personal and unique each child makes their projects!

Owls

Inspired by several other art teacher bloggers, we did colored paper owls in the K-2nd classroom. The first thing the kids did was to draw the basic shapes on a large blue paper. Then they tore little "feathers" out of brown, gray and white paper. Eyes are circles and beak, ears and feet are triangles. They really got into this project.

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