Winter Landscape

Since the weather was a balmy 5 degrees when it was time for school to begin today... I decided to go with a snowman theme for our lesson this week.  I got this idea from Deep Space Sparkle.  (You've got to check out this blog.  She has so many great ideas with easy instructions.  At the top there is an "art lessons" tab with lessons organized by grade level, or if you scroll down the home page, on the bottom right there is a "category column" where the lessons are organized by seasons, themes, etc.)

We are going to do the Easy Winter Landscape lesson this week.

I'm going to incorporate this book Snowmen At Night.  Have you read it?  It has awesome illustrations. 

 I had the kids look at the trees in this book closely.  We also looked at the trees outside the classroom window and noticed their shape and color, especially the colors of the trees up close (more dark) and the colors of those in the distance (less dark).

Next, we started with our blue sheet of paper and drew a light pencil line horizontally through the middle of the sheet.  Then we painted the entire lower portion white.  I had mixed a light grey color before we started for each student combining white and a small drop of grey paint.  We used this light grey color first and painted two trees starting from the base of the white line.  Then we used the regular grey paint for two trees, starting in the middle of the white "snow."  Last, we painted two black trees starting about an inch from the bottom of the sheet.  The varying distances makes the perspective look great.  Last, we painted a little snowman.

I think this lesson could be used for any age. The older grades could add more details although I wish we'd had more narrow paintbrushes.  It was hard to make thin branches.