African Lions

Theme: Continents and Oceans
Africa

I love lion crafts. Using yarn is always a fun way to create texture. The kids had a bit of trouble with the yarn, but enjoyed in none-the-less. I love how unique the faces turned our with the whiskers and mouths and even the eyes a bit different on each one.

Art Friday #9

Continuing our study of lines, I had the children use all the rainbow colors to create vertical lines on a canvas. I worked with them to fill the space from top to bottom using fluid strokes. They turned our beautifully and I will post pictures of the student's work tomorrow. This was the sample. We are going to use the canvas in another way next week.

Flags and Clothing Around the World

Theme: Continents and Oceans

Today at school we had a special visitor...Woody the Horse. So craft was kind of an afterthought. I ordered the stickers from Oriental Trading and made a sheet template for the kids to follow. They put the corresponding traditional costume with the flag under the country/continent listed. It turned out to be a great exercise in following directions and spatial awareness. I had two moms there to help, too, which made things go very smoothly!

Moroccan, Africa		Native American, North America
Nigerian, Africa	Chinese, Asia	Haitian, North America
Japanese, Asia	German, Europe	Mexican, North America
Indian, Asia	Dutch, Europe	Irish,  Europe

7 Continent Animals

Theme: Continents and Oceans

Another find from Oriental Trading. This was a bit of a challenge trying to keep everyone together, but once they got the hang of it, they did great. The stickers can be really hard to get off the original paper. We also discovered a flaw. The sticker page for Antarctica had penguins, seals and polar bears. We know from our studies that polar bears only live in the Polar regions in the north, not in the Antarctic!

Tissue Turkeys

I forgot to take pictures of this craft, but this is the picture I got the idea from:



Instead of using multi-colored tissue paper I had the students use just the fall colors...red, orange, brown, yellow. I pre-cut the other pieces and they glued it all together.

Kids always love the turkey crafts!

Indian Corn

I precut the pieces and had the kids use sponge squares to dot read, orange and brown corn pieces with tempera paint. Then they attached the husk.

Craft Paper Turkeys

This was a kit ordered by Oriental Trading. I am not normally a hug fan of the kits, especially the foam ones. But I saw that this kit was made solely out of craft paper to I gave it a shot. I turned out so adorable since all the kids end up doing their feet a little wonky and the hats all crooked. They were super proud. I am so sad I didn't get pictures of the kids creations all done!

 

One thing I did do was separate all the pieces our and pre-attach the neck piece to the head and the string to the hat.

 

Art Friday #8

Lines, Lines, Lines

We started a new art element today: Lines!

We read Harold and the Purple Crayon and discussed the type of lines he used to create his world. Then we used colored pencils to create different lines of our own. The kids did a GREAT job of following along and trying to emulate the different types of lines.

Bean Shakers

Theme: Musical Instruments

The kids really love this classic craft. We decorate two paper plates with markers, get a scoopful of beans and glue the paper plates together. I use A LOT if tacky glue and have the kids "walk" their fingers around and around while we sing some songs to get it nice and stuck. After about 2 minutes it is ready to sit on it's own. We used the plates about an hour later for music and only one split open (after some enthusiastic abuse).

Bell, Button and Bead Bracelets

Theme: Musical Instruments

Students used these gold buttons, some small jungle bells and large wooden beads to create one or two bracelets. Later we used the bracelets as percussion instruments during music!

Note: I love the lacing strings from Discount School Supply. Almost every child is able to string by themselves.

Art Friday #7

Theme: Musical Instruments

I had a sick day today, so my sub gladly had the kids paint their very own train whistles. From her feedback if we do this again we should cover the mouthpiece with masking tape ahead of time so they can pull it off and blow their whistles without the threat of painty lips!


Color Mixing & Train Whistles

Halloween Masks

I needed something fast and simple, yet enticing for Halloween. Yay for Michaels and their foam kits. This kit had 12 masks and all the stickers we needed to make the crafts. I pre-attached the elastic strings to the back so the kids could wear them right away. Who is that masked child?

Owls

I LOVE owls. I had about 20 TP rolls, So, voila! The TP owl is born. I saw some similar projects on Pinterest and just adapted it to the materials I had. I used cute craft paper and precut the wings, beaks and eyes. The kids drew their feathers, pupils and attached all the pieces.

Art Friday #6

Warm and Cool Chalk Scenes

Chalk on Cardstock

This may be one of my favorite projects. All of the kids did this eagerly and I think even the ones with fine motor issues had a great time and turned out well. I lightly made outlines for the colors with crayon and we did the warm first, then the cool to make the chalk completely separate. I attached each scene to a slightly larger piece of black cardstock to make it look more formal as it was out culminating color project.

Handprint Cats

I saw these on a website and adjusted them to fit our class. I precut the hands and the head from black cardstock and made the brooms from construction paper. I glued the whiskers on to the bead so they could fully dry ahead. The kids used white crayons to make the mouth and cut their own hat from any color they wished. They turned out really cute.

Bedazzled Leaves

The kids love to bedazzle things. It is an easy way to make them happy and create something pretty. I made photocopies of a leave template and printed them on heavy colored paper, then precut them and added the ribbon. Alternatively, they could each get a magnet on the back. I set out plates of goodies (jewels, buttons, sequins) and let the kids go at it. I also put the dots of glue on for them as I've learned my lesson as far as glue goes.

Art Friday #5

Art Element: Color

Project: Warm and Cool Colors

I started art friday with talking about warm and cool colors and showing some examples from a book about Monet. The kids seemed to get the difference pretty well. I talked about how color can represent mood or feeling or more literal elements of art.



Color Panels
The kids used oil pastels to create their color panels. I outlined each color ahead of time and they filled them in. This was the first time I used oil pastels with the kids and I absolutely loved it. They are so easy to use and require much less effort to fill and space.

When the paper is folded accordian style and set up, one way you can see the warm colors and the other way the cool colors.

Fall Night Scene, Drawing

Theme: Fall

I wanted to use these foam stickers I already have and incorporate some sort of drawing, so we did this night scene. The kids followed along as I modeled. I was very impressed with the outcome and all but one child followed carefully and created their own scene. One child just scribbled on the paper and added the stickers on top of the scribbling. He was happy with the outcome!

Fall Trees

Theme: Fall

I stenciled the trees ahead of time this year. The kids used sponge sqaures to add the leaves. They did red, yellow, then mixed the red and yellow to make the orange.