End of the Year Paper Sculptures

The last few weeks of the school year are in full swing. All 400ish portfolios are handed back which means one day-no grade-"Take it with you please!"-projects are happening all over the place.

THIS is my favorite. Any class that was caught up and had a day or so left with me are making these wicked awesome paper sculptures. HUGE thanks to the ever brilliant shine brite zamorano for the inspiration via this post from pinterest.

These were done with a variety of K-4 classes and were incredibly open ended. I made the video below (Sorry I don't do sound!) to show them some of the basics and just "required" them to do two pieces of paper as the base. The two paper rule was to give it a little weight so they wouldn't lift when they started gluing. Everything else they did was up to them. Most students went abstract but I had a few do playgrounds, roller coasters, houses, and masks.

The only two negatives were the prep of cutting all the paper and having K & 1-ers wanting to do the cylinder and having difficulty gluing it down with enough glue to keep it on. There was a lot of end of the world tears when that happened.

My FAVORITE thing that happened was no one asking to do free art in my 3 & 4 classes because they were so completely engaged (which says a lot for the last 3 weeks of school).

HIGHLY recommend this as an end of the year project, if you have any paper left that is!

If the Dinosaurs Came Back (2015)

This is another repeat project that I did with students in my last school. You can check out the original lesson here. It's such a fun way to teach finding shapes to draw with K & 1 because DINOSAURS!

I Can draw a dinosaur using shapes
I Can draw a city with a lot of detail

Day 1: Read a book that is probably in my top 10 list of Best Books for an Elementary Art Room... "If the Dinosaurs Came Back" by Bernard Most. The way he uses colors only on the dinosaurs is my favorite part and a great conversation piece to talk about with students.

After we read the story, I had a few pictures of dinosaurs on my SMART Board and had students come up and draw the shapes they saw over the top of the dinosaurs. I 100% believe this was a part of the process that made my students successful on this project. After this practice, I gave each a fabulous resource that came right from this book! A photocopy of the last page which is a picture glossary of the dinosaurs in the book. Looking at that (and practicing on it if needed) they drew their dinosaur using shapes on a 6X9 piece of paper and selected a color tempera paint to fill it in with.

 Day 2: Read another one of Most's dinosaur books called "How Big Were the Dinosaurs?". This one is quite a bit longer but really engaging the way he compares sizes.

After reading the book, I showed them my demo of drawing the city and we talked about all the types of details they could add to make them REALLY look like a city and then they got busy drawing. They drew directly with sharpie. When their city was done they added more details to, and cut out, their dinosaur and glued it to their city.

These would have been perfect to have students record some type of audio with and add a QR code when displayed. NEXT TIME!

Cat in the Hats! (2015)

At the beginning of March kinders and 1st grade celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a little Cat in the Hat draw along and painting. Inspiration and some of the drawing steps came from this post via Pinterest. 

 I really pushed that they could look silly and NOT perfect because Dr. Seuss would probably love that! It is a little challenging and some kiddos got frustrated easily and started over once or twice.

They used black crayons to draw and red watercolor.

While they painted and colored other Dr Seuss like things I played them these awesome read alouds of classic Dr. Seuss books...