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!

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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shape people

These crazy-colored shape people are done by first grade students. They are an outgrowth of the bubble people I do with Kindergarten students. The goal is simply to move children away from drawing stick people and toward drawing people with whole bodies.

I introduce the lesson by having students name the shape of the head (oval, not circle), and talking about the elbow and knee as joints that join the upper and lower parts of arms and legs. We move our arms and legs in different poses. I then demonstrate the light drawing of a bubble person on a chart paper, using a pencil. I show how to outline the outside of the entire body shape with a marker, as this is a tricky thing for some students.

Students draw bubble people in pencil, one bubble at a time: head, neck, body, two-part arms, and two-part legs. I talk them through the body parts so that they don't leave anything out. Then they outline with marker around the outside of the "bubbles" to create a stylized person shape. They erase the pencil lines and "crazy-color" the resulting shape. If there's still time, they do a second one, either smaller or larger than the first. For this activity, we skip doing faces or other additions to the people shapes, and concentrate on bright colors and/or patterns. Some children have a hard time outlining the entire outside of the shape and outline each bubble instead, or cross through joints. I try to stay close and help them with their second drawing.

Other lessons in this activity are how to use and care for the markers (cap on the end while drawing, cap snapped shut when finished to preserve ink), how to use your empty hand to hold the paper still while outlining, and how to erase (just the line, not all over the paper), When there is fifteen minutes left (classes are one hour), I tell students that whatever they are doing right now, it is the last thing they will do: If drawing bubbles, they will outline and erase and stop. If they are outlining, they will finish and stop. If they are coloring, they will finish and stop. Some student work, then will have one or two "colored-in" shape people and one "blank" one. After putting away materials, students walk around the room looking at everyone's work. I ask them to look for something that is completely different from everyone else's. After they've seen everyone's work, they share what they've noticed.

Sometimes I display these in a long line across the top of the white board or over a window. Looks great!