A Trip To The Zoo...

It's that time of year when everyone is starting to get a bit restless and summer vacation is on the horizon so I'm working hard to keep everyones attention and keep art fun.  One of my favorite things about my job is working with other teachers to provide lessons in multiple subjects.  I really do feel that the more integration used in schools the better the learning experience will be.  This is why I was thrilled when one of our first grade teachers approached me about doing a project with them.  First graders are headed to the zoo in a few weeks and were starting a research project on animals in our zoo.  They would be using various methods to learn about their animal and creating a book so I was asked to help them create their book covers.  Due to the end of the year stuff that always seems to pop up I wanted to make sure this lesson could be completed in 2 class periods so that it would be completed before their trip to the zoo.  Week one was spent looking at the images of the animals and sketching and on week 2 I had card stock "book covers" with their animals and names ready for their creations!  I was amazed at how wonderful their work turned out.  You could definitely tell the students who had been working hard on their research projects and had seen many images of their subjects.  Here are a few of our Book Covers!

Peacocks!

Pinterest is my new obsession! I mean seriously, what an amazing way to find lessons and project ideas. This is a lesson that I pinned and am so glad we tried it. My 4th graders have created the most adorable peacocks using a bunch of different techniques and I'm so glad to share them. We spend quite a bit of time on this project getting all of the papers ready so that we could assemble our collages. They were totally worth the time because they are a total hit and project that I will be sure to add to my "Must Do" list for next year.

Week 1 was spent using shaving cream and paint to create a marble background. All you do is spread out the shaving cream and drop the paint onto it. Then take a chop sick or paint brush handle and swirl it around. Be sure to keep from totally mixing the colors! We used blue and purple paint for this step. I thinned it down a bit with water and we used straws to drop it onto the shaving cream. Next year I want to try this step with liquid water colors.

After you swirl the paint you lay your drawing paper down onto the surface and make sure to get contact for the entire paper. Then just peel it off the shaving cream and scrape the shaving cream off and viola your paper looks like marble! Just let it dry on the drying rack and clean up. Clean up takes a while but the good thing is your room smells fantastic!

Week 2 we created the peacocks heads and feathers. We used marbles in pizza boxes to create the feathers. Then I added the Crayola Pearl paint to my blue paint to make the peacock heads special. (Does anyone know where you can buy just a big bottle of the pearl paint? I can only find the little ones in a 3 pack with other stuff.) Make sure to add lots of texture to the blue painted papers so their heads look cute!

Week 3 is assembly! We talked about drawing on the back so you don't see the pencil marks and making sure to have a big peacock and fill the page. We used construction paper to make the feathers pop and added wiggly eyes to make them look sweet! Finally I added the glitter glue (found on sale after christmas!) around the feathers for a little something special!

Take a look at our perfect peacocks!