This year I saw a new way of creating Northern Lights that I couldn't wait to try with my kiddos. Here is the link to the blog where I found this amazing project Color and Collage Blog. It has great instructions on it.
Everyone really loved the finished product, especially my young artists who made them.
This is a project that works great with incorporating geography, science, and stories from tribes.
We discussed places that you can see the Northern Lights from and used GoogleEarth to check out where they are located (here are some main ones):
Canada
Alaska
Russia
Finland
Iceland
Step One-Paint watercolor mountain paper
The first day we painted a sheet of watercolor paper with mostly blues, purple, pink, and black.
Then was added some salt on top of the wet paint and then pushed plastic wrap on top of everything. I reminded the kids that they needed to work quickly so they paint would still be wet when they added salt and plastic wrap.
Step Two: Cut and Glue down mountains
Draw and cut a stencil for the mountain paper. The other blog has more details and a great example of this step. I showed the kids how to cut and glue both of these paper down to look like a mountain range. A great time to talk about foreground and background.
Step Three: Create Chalk Lights
Now it's time to use your stencil to create the lights. I made the kids put an "X" on the side of the stencil that matches their mountain range. Then I showed them how to color the top of the stencil in chalk, drag it into the sky, and then smudge the chalk upward. Some of them got very creative and used their stencil to create multiple lights.
Step Four: Add Stars
The last thing we did was add starts with silver paint and toothpicks. Everyone loves when the metallic paint comes out!
