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.

Pointilist Snowmen

This is an easy project for younger grades with a unique approach: dot painting (similar to pointillism) using q-tips. 

When I taught this to first graders last year, we talked about the artist Georges Seurat and I showed them An Afternoon at La Grande Jatte, (you can check this out from the school library, PIC 198).

We talked about pointillism and looked closely at how the brush strokes differ from other kinds of painting.  The kids were very excited to try their hand at this.  We started with dark blue construction paper.  They were instructed to draw three circles: large on bottom, medium in the middle and small on top.  Next we dipped q-tips in white tempera paint and filled the circles with dots.  When the paint was dry, they used crayons to draw hats, scarfs, eyes, boots, and background details.

Here is a close up of the "dot painting." 

*Note* we don't have q-tips in the art supply room, so you would have to provide them yourself.  Luckily they are cheap!

Jackson Pollock Art

This is a fun project for all ages.  We began by talking about the artist Jackson Pollock.  I showed the class this poster from the library and asked what they could "see" within his painting.  There were many amusing answers and this led us to a short discussion of abstract art. 

Next, I handed out a blank sheet of white paper, a marble, and a tray to each student.  (There are a stack of trays  in the art supply closet that are perfect for this project...and don't forget the tub full of t-shirt smocks to keep the paint off their clothes).  I squeezed 4-5 large drops of different colored tempera paint on each sheet of paper.  The students carefully rolled their marbles back and forth across the paint by tipping their trays from side to side. 

The results are really neat.  This is a picture from when we did this project at home last year.  If you mount the finished project on black cardstock it looks really professional!