Chalk Pastel Cardinals
January weather can be rather bleak at times, so at Brennan School we added some brightness to our hall bulletin boards with these cardinal art projects.
The idea I used for my grades 3 - 8 art classes came from
Paint Night. There aren't any written instructions at this site for this project, so we did the following: We worked with chalk pastels on grey construction paper. We first used our palest blue on its side to cover the entire background to get a greyish-blue winter sky effect. Next, we select a medium blue pastel to create the trees in the background / distance and our darkest blue or purple for the tree branches in the foreground. Lastly, we drew the cardinal and berries with our brightest red.
Handprint Cardinals
After drawing and colouring tree branches with regular wax crayons, my grades one and two students used their hands to print (paint) cardinals onto the branches. I found this idea at
Mrs. P4s Art Room.
Salt Dough Cardinals
Finally, not to be outdone by the big kids, our kindergarten students created their birds on salt dough. I used this
Simple Salt Dough Recipe. They had a great time first playing with their dough, kneading, rolling and shaping it. Their final result - a personal touch, with their hand print.
Advice from a Cardinal Poster & Bookmark
In my google search for cardinal projecta, I stumbled upon
Advice from a Cardinal, a lovely image of a cardinal perched on a tree along with his advice. I printed this out and displayed it with all of our projects.
I also used something similar to create Valentine/Bookmarks which I gave to our students and staff for Valentine's Day. My intent was to combine "I Love to Read", art and Valentine's Day and I believe it went over well.
The idea I used for my grades 3 - 8 art classes came from Paint Night. There aren't any written instructions at this site for this project, so we did the following: We worked with chalk pastels on grey construction paper. We first used our palest blue on its side to cover the entire background to get a greyish-blue winter sky effect. Next, we select a medium blue pastel to create the trees in the background / distance and our darkest blue or purple for the tree branches in the foreground. Lastly, we drew the cardinal and berries with our brightest red. 
