Kindergarten - Scarecrows!

SCARECROWS! I love Scarecrows in the Fall! Especially when they are made by Kindergarteners! I LOVE the book Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant. It is beautifully written and beautifully illustrated by Lauren Stringer. We talk about the TEXTURE Fall can bring, that we will be making scarecrow pictures with real and implied textures.

Week 1 - I share the book first with my class, and then we prep papers for our plaid and rough denim jeans. A 6x4 brown construction paper with crayon plaid and then coloring with the side of a blue crayon on a blue 3x4 piece of construction paper. We save these for the next week.

Week 2 - I give the students a 11x17 piece of light blue paper and a 11x9 piece of light green paper. Students are asked to barely cut a strip off one wide end of the paper, to make it slightly bumpy. Then we glue this down on the bottom half of the paper. Student use crayons to draw a sun and clouds, then corn stalks on the right and left side of the paper, I remind them, the scarecrow will be in the middle, so don't draw corn there. If they want to make the sky more blue, they can use crayon to color the sky. I give them a 1/2"x 6" strip to glue down to the center of the paper for the stick our scarecrow will be set on.

I draw on the back of their brown plaid papers a rectangle on each side to cut off so that it looks like a shirt. Then a line on the back of the blue paper to cut it in half to have 2 pieced. We glue the shirt down first, then the two legs. 

Week 3 - Faces - I give a 3" square with a circle drawn on it, have them cut it out and glue down. I also have them fringe some yellow strips of paper for hay coming out of the cuffs. They glue these on as well. Then some fun finishing touches... button eyes, I have pre-cut fabric squares for knee patches and burlap for straw hats. Then a black crayon smile that looks stitched on. Any any other stitches they want to add! If they want to add a red barn on the horizon line, they can do that too.  :)

There are lots of ways to make this project, I have come to like this version a lot. These look adorable all hanging together in the hallway. :)

 

6th Grade - Fall Landscapes!

These Fall Landscapes were created on 150lb Jack Richeson Watercolor paper.  The students looked at a slideshow of many different fall themes.... harvest time, spooky sky's and Halloween.  They chose the kind of fall landscape they wanted to paint.

After drawing our ideas in our sketchbooks, I encouraged students to draw very little on the watercolor paper, but rather plan and paint the sky and ground first. They could always draw more later on top of the paint. This keeps them from painting the objects first, then struggling with the space around them. Since most objects were going to be painted as a silhouette, I  was not as concerned with details on objects.

I also encouraged the use of foreground, middleground and background and how to give a sense of space with near and far.

This lesson gives lots of room for creativity! Students who looked at the handouts of the slideshow did more and had more success. They did not copy necessarily, but took good ideas from several.  I plan to have even more handout options next time!

3rd Grade Spooky Castles with Oil Pastels

This is an all time favorite to teach! All students LOVE to create castles, they all end up looking unique! This is one version, I have on this blog another post with these castles color with chalk pastels.  I do love this version though... oil pastels is really my favorite!

These castles are painted directly with black tempera.  We started by drawing a line with pencil for a ground line, then a rectangle for the entry way. I demonstrate the whole painting, I ask for ideas, they are full of them! From there they get started and paint direct, each section of the building must touch the next. Lots of windows... anything they can think of to add!

I highly recommend the virtual tour of Warwick Castle in Warwick, England. My students LOVED the virtual tour so much, it was difficult to get them in their seats to paint!  

Virtual Tour of Warwick Castle