Students love Pete the Cat, and this new Christmas book does not disapoint. They were very excited to make their own Pete. I drew the outline of the cat and the students drew the hat, eyes and nose. Then they painted him.
Doing this activity a second time with a different group of students, we made the stars on a yellow piece of paper and glued it on after. These stars are "brighter" than the ones which were coloured directly onto the red paper. The grade 2\3 students enjoyed the 3D candy canes so much that I came up with this Christmas tree which uses the same shading concept. I drew the tree shape and the star for them to save some time in our 1 hour lesson. Although, if I had more time for my art lessons, I would definately tackle drawing the tree and star with the older grades. Oil pastels were blended on the tree by overlapping the colours as the colour is applied. The shading on the tree is created by using 2 shades of green and a white. the pastel is applied in a curve shaped motion to create the cylinder effect of the tree. For the star, students made a dot in the center of the star and extended lines from the dot to each angle of the star shape. The star was then coloured in interchanging shades of yellow. I think this tree would also look really great in non-traditional colours. Same prep - two projects! To help out the K's and 1's, we drew a triangle on their page to guide the edge of the tree. We also traced the stars so that they could simply cut them out. The focus of this lesson was positive space and negative space. We talked about how in the first tree our eye is drawn to the tree, whereas in the second tree our eye is drawn to what is happening behind the tre. The grade 3 students called these 3d candy canes. The 3d effect is made by using white, then a dark and light shade of pastel. They started by drawing the outline of the candy cane. They used the dark pastel in a back and forth motion on the outside line of the candy cane. Then they used the same motion to make a white line down the middle of the candy cane, being careful to leave a space between the dark and the white. The lighter shade is used blend the dark and the white by running the colour from side to side through the other shades. These ornaments were easy to make for our Kindergarten students. They started by lightly tracing a circle with a pencil. They filled in the circle with different types of lines. We talked about zigzag lines, dotted lines, broken lines, wavy lines and droppy lines. These types of lines can also be thick or thin. Finally they added a string and erased the pencil lines. This activity went very well with the book "10 Trim The Tree'ers". After reading the book, we made our own version of a holiday counting book. One page of our book was "2 hanging ornaments". What a wonderful way to blend Art, Math and Language Arts for the Christmas season. |
I am an enthusiastic educator who loves combining great books, art and writing in my lessons. Visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store for free ideas and activities to enjoy with your students!
AuthorRenee Landry is an Elementary School Teacher in Rothesay, NB. SeasonsSeasonsSome of my Favorite Sites:
http://www.zartart.com.au/html/gallery.html http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/ http://www.district6.nbed.nb.ca/artgallery/artgalleryindex.htm |