"Ain't Gonna Paint No More"

This book is a must-have for Art teachers. My little ones love the illustrations, rhymes, and mess!

We started this project by reading this incredible book.  The kiddos love trying to figure out the rhymes before I turn the page.  

Then we split into a few small groups to create collaborative pieces of art. Each group chose one person to lay on the large white bulletin board paper in a pose.  The rest of the group traced around that person, which ends up looking like those old crime scenes photos.

We talk about how they can use colors, patterns, shapes to fill up their outline.  Each person has to participate and they have to learn to work together so they don't cover over another person's art.  I pass out a couple colors at a time to each group, then rotate the colors between all the groups.  By the end of class every group has had a chance to use all the colors.  

The hardest part was finding a place to let our people dry without ripping the paper, dripping on the floor, or having them fold together.  

The next week each group worked together to cut out their art person.  We hung all of them in the hallway, which was a great way to spread some color around our school.

Fireflies (Glow in the Dark)

This was a project I did with my 2nd graders at the beginning of the year.  I thought it would be neat to have them make something that would pop off the page...and glow!

First we learned about fireflies and how they are bioluminescent (integrating some science into this project). 

Then we created our value scale moonlit background using sponge brushes and paint.  We used cool colors (blue, purple, teal) and a little bit of white.  I absolutely love the effect of sponge brushes for blending.  

The next class we used oil pastels to draw our designs and details. They could choose which direction they wanted their paper to face (horizontal or vertical).  They added trees, limbs, grass, mason jars, leaves, etc.

After that they designed their lightning bugs on a separate sheet of paper.  I showed them examples of different perspectives and details they could add to the background.  We talked about how they needed to make sure they didn't draw them too small because cardboard would be going behind the bugs. They used sharpies for the outline and markers/construction paper crayons for the inside.

The last step was cutting out the bugs and adding cardboard pieces to the back using liquid glue. We used silver paint to add stars to our sky and GLOW paint on our bug tails.  They loved seeing their art light up when we turned the lights out. I got my glow paint from Michael's, it was very affordable and you don't need much.