snowmen with personality

In a second grade class where my job was to teach art all morning, I read the book The Biggest, Best Snowman Ever. After a short discussion about the story, I told the students they were going to make a torn paper collage of a snowman so big that the only thing they'd be able to see was part of the face. Then I proceeded to have them show me some facial expressions.... happy.... sad.... angry.... surprised.... shocked.... thoughtful.... etc.... and I drew some quick expressions on the board, the way they might look on a snowman's face (with "coal" eyes and mouth).

I showed students how to tear out the side of a snowman's head out of white paper, leaving the corner intact, and then gluing it onto a blue paper so that the corners lined up. Then I asked them to create a snowman face with a "carrot" nose and "coal" for eyes and the mouth... and to be sure to show some kind of interesting facial expression on their snowman.

I suggested that they tear out all the parts first and arrange them how they like them before they glue anything down. Most of the students followed these directions. Not all, but most. The hardest part of this collage activity is the initial tearing of the head shape. I showed students how to measure a finger length from the top left corner of the paper, and a finger length from the bottom right corner of the paper, put dots at those points, then tear a head shape that begins and ends at those dots. Just a couple of students still had trouble getting a workable head shape; for those students, I drew a very faint pencil line for the head shape and had them tear on the line.

This is a simple activity, using only 9x12 construction paper and glue, that requires some fine motor coordination, some eye-hand coordination, a little patience, and a little creativity and imagination. As students worked, I wandered around and asked what facial expression they were creating on their snowman. For hats, I had students just look for any color construction paper from the scrap bin. One student chose the same blue as the background for the hat, so I had him switch that out so we could actually see the hat.

When the snowmen faces were done, we lined them up on the white board tray and looked at each one individually. They definitely did show a wide variety of facial expressions!

Before they began their snowman faces, I had students create different facial expressions and drew them on the white board to show how changing the size of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, and direction of the eyebrows could give the snowman some personality.  

P.S. This lesson is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store. :-)

be an artist

One of the first things I do with students is introduce what I call "artist behaviors" -- Look, Think, Choose, Do. When I had my own art classroom, I had reference pictures on the wall:


Now that I'm doing art lessons in other teachers' classrooms, I almost always write the four words on the board before starting an art lesson, no matter what grade level I am working with. If I'm with students I've worked with before, I have them tell me what "the four artist behaviors" are while I write them; if I am with students who are new to me, I quickly introduce them and then refer to them during the lesson. I explain first that artists look everywhere, at everything, to get ideas, and that once they have an idea they look more, very carefully. While they are looking, they start to think about what they want to do. They need to choose materials and tools, and also, if they are painting or drawing, where something is going to go on the paper, how big it will be, what colors they will use, whether it will be realistic or abstract, etc. I emphasize that an artist will always look, think, and choose before they begin to do their art work, and that this helps them to be creative.

Making a big deal about looking and thinking has helped me teach children to slow down, take care with their art work, and make personal choices that may be different from the person sitting next to them or across from them. If I am reading a picture book to introduce the art activity, I make sure they have ample time to look at the illustrations, and I will point out details if they don't find them. If we are using a visual reference, such as photographs or a famous art work, we spend time really looking at the elements of art and think about the artists' choices of color, line, shape, and texture, and the use of space, When they are ready to begin an activity, even if everyone is working on the same thing, I make sure they have choices of color, or materials, or sizes, or background colors, or something that will be theirs, not mine. I always ask them to think first about what they are going to do, picture in their mind where they will start and what they will be using before they start.

And I usually point out that "look, think, choose, do" are good behaviors for ALL school work... and even out of school.... not just for art work!
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