harvest moon and spooky trees

Sometimes I get inspiration for art lessons from random pictures, and that's how this one happened. One day my Facebook feed presented a photo of a tree silhouetted against a huge moon and this art lesson immediately formed itself in my mind:  tissue paper collage moon + spooky tree. I could see the end result in my brain, and backtracked through that image to develop the lesson for a second grade classroom.

At first, I thought it would be a fine idea to have the students create the circle using a compass, but no compasses were to be found so I opted for a hand-drawn circle, which turned out to be a huge benefit!  The circle was filled with tissue paper collage, and while that dried, we made the trees -- basically a line drawing outlined with another continuous line, cut on the outside line, and flipped over.

My suggestions to the kids:
Don't put the moon in the exact center of the page.
Don't put the tree in the exact center of the moon.

Some of the kids had a little trouble cutting out the tree shape, especially if they had crossed branches, so I helped by showing them how to cut into a closed shape. For a "first time" try, I think these turned out great! I wrote up the lesson and had a few other teachers try it out, and it was a hit with everyone!

It's a great art lesson for teaching how to use space, talking about the use of warm and cool colors, and working with interesting lines. It was fun, easy, a little messy, and generally pretty successful. And it's perfect for October! Just spooky enough to be "Halloween-y" without all the Halloween hype. This lesson, with step-by-step directions, is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. Look for Harvest Moon Tree Silhouette!

sunbursts, starbursts, and silhouettes

Sometimes when I am looking for an idea for an art lesson, I scout around the Artsonia website. That's where I found these interesting starburst designs, done with primary and secondary colors. They looked easy and fun so I decided to try them in warm or cool colors with a second grade class. To introduce the lesson, I just posted a piece of paper and started drawing with three warm colors:  yellow, gold, and orange. I tried to emphasize the zigzaggy method of creating concentric circles of rays. After I had laid down about six rows, I put up another paper and started another one with cool colors: turquoise, blue, and purple. During this introduction, I did not speak at all. When I had two good starts, a warm one and a cool one, I had the students tell me what I did. These became the directions:

- choose 3 colors, warm or cool
- start near the center with a dot
- get bigger and bigger
- fill the whole paper
- no scribbling!

I gave them directions to choose three warm or cool colors and show them to me. Several students mixed the palettes; instead of giving them paper, I said, "you have two warms and one cool" or "you have two cools and one warm." I didn't tell them which color needed to be replaced; I left that up to them. As they got started, I quickly noticed that some students had difficulty making the short, zigzaggy strokes radiating out from the center of the circle. A few were coloring concentric lines instead, or lines that looked like open zigzags. For those few students, I took their hand in mine and showed them how to make the little zigzags.

When the first student had finished filling the whole paper, I interrupted their work for a lesson in making the cityscape silhouette. On black construction paper, I first drew a line across the bottom, a few inches up. Then I started with a tall rectangle in the center for a building, added a roof, and proceeded to add more rectangles until building shapes extended across the whole paper. I pointed out to the students how the buildings were not touching, but were pretty close to each other. I demonstrated cutting them carefully, and gluing down the silhouette. I made a big deal about putting the glue on the side of the paper that has the pencil lines so that the clean side will be the one we see when it's done. When I held up the finished product, there were a lot of oooohs and aaaaahs.

When doing the silhouette, some students mistakenly cut off the baseline, or cut off one of the buildings by accident, so they needed to do that part over. A few students put the glue on the wrong side of the paper (this always happens!) so we needed to do a little erasing. Overall, the results were pretty striking, especially when they were lined up along the white board tray.

And what about the other half of the black paper? Students were very intrigued by the opposite effect, and asked what to do with them. I decided to collect them and use them for a future activity. I haven't invented that one yet, but they are safe in a manila envelope.

hands

On a day near the end of the school year, when I found myself substituting in a second grade classroom where I had never been before, for a teacher I had never met, in an emergency situation in which there were no lesson plans, the first thing I did was scout around the cupboards to see what art materials might be available. I found some white construction paper that had been cut to about 9x18, so I pulled it out, sorted through it for pieces that were not bent or torn, counted out enough sheets for the class, consulted my little folder stash of emergency ideas, and decided to have the students do some line designs with their hands.

I demonstrated on the white board what to do:  I traced my hand along with part of my arm, then drew five lines across the paper in different directions, crossing over the traced hand and extending the lines off the edges of the paper. I gave directions to color in all the spaces however they liked, and let them go to work. It was interesting to see that some students drew all their lines extending off two edges of the paper, while other students drew some of their lines stopping at other lines rather than crossing them.

These students had just had three substitute teachers in two days, so they were pretty antsy to begin with, but this activity pretty much captured everyone's interest. They didn't have to do a lot of thinking, but it did quiet them down and the results are actually pretty striking. This would be a great activity for any substitute teacher needing an hour to kill.

I could see doing this using only warm or cool colors, or warm colors in the hand spaces and cool colors in the background spaces, or patterns in the hand spaces with plain colors in the background spaces (or vice-verse), or using only three analogous colors, or different values of one color, or using watercolors, or pastels, or adding textured rubbings, or doing it with two hands, or three hands....

I'm pretty sure this is something I will do again. It was easy, fun, interesting, and needed no planning whatsoever!

hearts

One of my pet peeves in children's art work is the use of cliches like hearts, rainbows, and suns in the corner, which have a bad habit of appearing in drawings willy-nilly, just because the student is falling back on known shapes rather than exploring new ones. Some will disagree with me, but that's where my thinking is. Anyway, that doesn't mean I dislike hearts, rainbows, or suns... I just want them to be necessary in the art work.

In this activity, the heart is the only subject matter. It is an easy, easy, easy activity that is practically foolproof. It requires no prep; all that's needed is white construction paper (we used 9x12, but a bit smaller would work, too) and crayons. To introduce the activity, I showed an example of a piece of art work by Jim Dines, who has done tons of art with hearts. I had students tell what they noticed and wrote their responses on the board next to the photograph (see photo at the end of this post). After this introduction, we reviewed warm and cool colors and I explained that students would need to draw a very large heart (I demonstrated) and that they would fill the heart with warm or cool colors (their choice) and the background with the opposite palette. I gave a short little demonstration to show how to color to make it look "markerish" .... that was one of the students' observations.... and then sent them off to go to work. I did wander around and show some of the students individually how to put color in smallish patches, but otherwise they were pretty much on their own.

When the color was done, most students outlined the heart with black crayon, then chose a mounting color that was from the same palette as the colors used in the heart. This took most students about an hour to complete, and some of them worked during lunch time. It turned out to the a perfect activity for a rainy, rainy Friday in a second grade classroom!


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cityscapes on watercolor background

This second grade lesson combines a watercolor wash, drawing with construction paper crayons, symmetry, and a little color theory. In another version, students draw symmetrical cityscapes on black paper, but one day I came across sunset cityscapes at the TeachKidsArt blog which inspired me to combine the two ideas.

First, students use sponges and either warm or cool colors for the washes. They wet the whole paper first with the sponges using clean water, then fill the paper with color, either stroking or blotting the paint. If papers are not wet enough, I am right there with a spritzer bottle. :-). I have them use sponges for the wash because I don't have any large-sized watercolor brushes. The sponges have the additional benefit of adding some interesting texture. The washes are put aside for later (in our case, this is weeks later).

For the cityscape drawing lesson, I first have students observe and discuss several photographs and art examples of cityscapes. Then I ask them to tell me what they know symmetry. The most common responses usually refer to a line, so I use questioning to bring the discussion around to what it means to be symmetrical, and how we know something is symmetrical. I also introduce the word bilateral, explaining that "bi" means "2" and "lateral" means "side" -- this leads students to the idea that bilateral symmetry means that two sides are the same.

The cityscape is drawn on black construction paper using construction paper crayons (which they love!). I suggest that students first draw a horizontal base line, then start with the center building. They color in doors, windows, and roofs before adding two identical buildings on each side of the center one. They work out from the center two buildings at a time, coloring in all details. When the drawings are complete -- that is, they have drawn as many buildings as will fit -- they cut around the buildings and glue the silhouette onto their own watercolor wash.

After students have a chance to walk around and see everyone else's work, I have them discuss with a partner what they like most about their composition, and explain how they used bilateral symmetry.