Watercolor Resist Snowflake Project with 5th Grade

Sometimes you get a total hit with projects and other times its a massive miss.... Luckily those misses don't happen often! Unfortunately 5th grade got hit with a miss!

Both 5th and 6th grade just finished up pretty lengthy projects before this, so I wanted to do a little more of a short and sweet/ cut and dry project to re-inspire my students who get frustrated with long projects that are a higher skill level. Snowflakes are a great answer to that predicament.

There are a couple versions of this floating around the internet and pinterest this just happens to be a primary version that I found.

I can statement: I can talk about composition and use good composition ingredients in a snowflake artwork

Day 1: Started off with an intro about composition including this great little youtube video...We also looked at some different artwork and talked about what made it have a good (or bad) composition.

Then they did this worksheet as a review of what we just talked about and to do some brainstorming for the project...

There were a few kids that even botched this worksheet and didn't get that they DID NOT have to draw actual snowflakes in the boxes. This was already making this project worrisome...

Day 2: After looking at the worksheets I knew I needed to talk about composition again and finally saw light bulbs going on. Now when it was time to start, I knew going into this there would be some frustration about not being able to see what they were drawing with the white crayon so I prepped them good and plenty for that part. I had very little complaints actually :) At this point I probably should have talked about pushing really hard and not to use the hard white crayons but they were passed out before I even noticed they were in the container...

When the first kiddo was ready to paint I did a demo on my own about taping down my painting, selecting warm or cool colors to do the wash in, and the science of the salt acting how it does with the watercolor...and then they got to work painting when they were ready...

Now I love me some crayon resist. And it almost always a guarantee success but in this case it flopped. I don't know if we weren't using the best white crayons we could of used or they didn't push hard enough, maybe too much watercolor but a lot of these projects got botched. Only a handful of students in each class ended up with a great project.

Day 3:  I tried to ease the pain by letting them add fake snow or glitter to one of their snowflakes. They were pleased and accepted my apology! And while they started on their next project I called them over to add the finishing and somewhat "fixing" touch.

They were displayed with 6th grades snowflake project which was a total hit! You win some you lose some! Learning moments!

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Okay so looking at them now in pictures, they didn't turn out as poorly as I thought, just not as great as I wanted them to be.... 

Vertical Snowmen with Kindergarten

This is another repeat winter project from last year that had a few changes... I wanted to teach the same concept of vertical and horizontal to Kindergarten but I didn't feel the need to do the second artwork like I did the first time around. Here is the original project here with a link to the projects inspiration...

I Can statement: I can identify horizontal and vertical directions

Day 1: Started with one of my favorite snowman books Snowmen at Night and then talked about how in a lot of our projects I ask them to put their papers one way or another and how there was very specific words for those directions. After some arm movements, call and response, and silly quizzing with my arms... I showed them the paper that they were going to be using and how it would work perfect vertically for our snowmen. Last year I had some issues with snowmen not taking up the whole paper so we tried something a little different this year by drawing them top down. To my surprise it totally worked! Wahoo! We drew in white crayon then painted with white paint.

Day 2: I was very impressed when many of them remembered the words vertical and horizontal with a little first sound prompting and arm directions from me. Read a new book (new to me!) called All You Need for A Snowman.  SUPER CUTE. Then we flipped through pictures on the computer of a bunch of snowmen and did some compare and contrasting before talking about all the possibilities of things that their snowmen could be wearing. The rest of the time was theirs to add details to their snowmen with oil pastels...

Oh yeah, and check out this E-mail I got from a parent while doing this project--

Hi!  My name is ----------.  My daughter ---- is in Mrs. ------'s kindergarten class at McDill.  I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I were blown away yesterday when he was explaining how to write something to ---- and she said "Oh!  Just do it vertical?"  Ummm......what?????  Did my 5 year old just say and understand the word "vertical?"  When we asked ------ where she learned the word, she said very matter-of-factly "Art."  So, thank you for doing a great job teaching -----.  Art is her favorite class and we are blown away with what she is learning from you.

#WINNING

McDill Elementary.....

Jefferson Elementary....

Jan Brett's The Mitten with 1st Grade

Any chance I get to make connections to the core classrooms, I do it! When I found out first grade was doing an author study of Jan Brett I knew I had to jump on the chance to do something with one of her books.

I can statement: I can draw an animal from The Mitten using simple shapes

Day 1: The classes heard Jan Brett books from their teachers reading so I was really excited when I found this version of The Mitten read by Jan Brett herself on YouTube to change it up for them...

After the video I told them we were going to change the story by making the mitten decorative instead of white and they spent the rest of the time doing a crayon resist. Drawing a mitten was challenging for my 3rd graders (like crying in frustration challenging) so I made tracers for these kiddos. They could draw whatever they wanted on their mittens in crayon and had to pick one color to do a watercolor wash in over their drawings. If time allowed they practiced drawing the different animals from the story.

Day 2: To prep for this project I found an oval and traced in in the center of a 9x12 piece of paper for each of them to use as a starting point for their drawing. I made a drawing of each animal in the story using that same oval as the base and had the oval in red and the rest of the drawing in black so they could see how it was transformed into the different animals. I will dig them out and add a picture to add to the post later. I also did a demo for each of the more challenging ones on the document camera. I knew Jan Brett's beautiful illustrations might be hard for the kiddos to translate into their own drawings so I found a clip art version of each animal that simplified them and was easy to identify an oval as the base shape.

They chose one of the animals to be inside their mitten and after they were done drawing and coloring they cut both out, glued to black paper, and added some yarn for detailing on the mitten.


I selected this one to be on display for Youth Art Month at the library and I know it will be popular given that our Wisconsin Badgers are going to dominate in March Madness....

Here are more from each building, I am so happy they choose a variety of animals so I didn't end up getting 80 bunnies...

McDill Elementary...

Jefferson Elementary...

Youth Art Month Display at Portage County Public Library

Youth Art Month makes March one of the best months in the world. If you didn't catch my school wide display you are missing out.... just look at this beauty! I'm so proud!

I'm even more proud of the awesome work my students did on their projects! It was so hard selecting work to be displayed for YAM at the Portage County Public Library! Congratulations my wonderful artists!

Our district office made these beautiful certificates for all our students who had work on display!

 McDill Elementary!

 Jefferson Elementary!