Cool Winter Art Projects

Water Colours & Epsom Salt

Although this has been a mild winter, we did have some chill-to-the-bone weather!  To coincide with the season, my students created several wintery art projects, including Water Colours with Salt.
We used liquid water colours, choosing what we hoped to be "cool" colours.  Also, we used Epsom salt, rather than table salt.  As it worked out, our purple and green turned out to be rather warm, perhaps not unlike some parts of our winter have been.  That being said, I have to say the affect was really striking.  After the paint was dried, we added snowflakes that I had found at Dallarama - some were made of blue and white fun foam others from clear, hard plastic.  The students chose some of each to arrange and glue to their projects.

Cut and Fold Snowflakes

Another winter project we created this winter is Cut and Fold Snowflakes.  Although the website I found it on is written in a foreign language,  the step-by-step picture tutorial makes it easy to follow the directions.  Since our walls are all white, we made ours out of pastel coloured copy paper.  I really like the "woven" affect these snowflakes have.  The students attached string to the snowflakes and hung them from the lights.


In January while one of my sisters was hospitalized, I took along some paper and scissors and we created some of these snowflakes to decorate her hospital room.  We displayed them on her window and the daylight contrasted with the pastel colours, giving them a brighter hue.  Her room overlooked the hospital entrance, so whenever we arrived or left, we could always tell which was her room.

 

 

Snowflake Snowman

My grades 1 & 2 class also went on a rampage cutting snowflakes.  Theirs were the more traditional ones.  After creating dozens of them, we fashioned them into a jolly snowman to greet us each time we enter our classroom.

Dandelion Wishes

One of the last ELA / Art activities I had my students do in spring was create watercolour sunsets with silhouettes.  I borrowed the idea from That Artist Woman, but put my own twist to it.

 Dandelion Summer Wishes Poem
To compose the wishes poem, we brainstormed for several subheadings for things we might like to do during the summer holidays including: trips, fun activities, work projects, etc.  The students listed several ideas for each topic.  Next, they selected one "wish" in each topic that they most wanted to come true.  They typed those in a table in Word along with a title and their name to complete the poem.  After printing it out and cutting it into strips, they arranged their strips on their watercolour sunsets and silhouettes to make it look like their wishes are floating away with the dandelion seeds.

We kept their project up on one of our bulletin boards, so that once school starts we cab reread them to see which of their dandelion wishes came true.

Since we'll be starting a new school year next week, students might have back-to-school wishes they'd like to write about.
Perhaps you have ELA / Art ideas that you'd like to share.  I'd love hear about them.

SmArts 2014-15 Part 2

In our second term, the focus of our SmArts classes was painting with water colours and acrylics. 

Intermediate Class

Northern Lights

The Northern Lights are always fascinating for all ages.  The 

dropped dynamic colors onto wet paper and let it soar down the page, blending and moving like real Northern Lights. The movement of color created their art.

Butterflies

The Butterflies were a lesson in mirrored imaging, beauty and selecting colors that work well.    It is a lesson of detail, balance and fosters awareness and appreciation of the value of insects. We used 6" x 8" mounted canvases from Dollarama for this project.  As soon as the paint was dried, the paintings were ready to display.

 

 Primary Class

Metallic Owls

Our Metallic Owls introduced the students to Folk Art.  The owl is created by applying a raised glue surface, and the lesson teaches the importance of detail and shape. Each student chose either copper, gold or bronze metallic paint and when applied, it gave their image the appearance of hammered metal.  Similar to the butterflies above, the owls were painted on mounted canvases from Dollarama for this project. 

Children in the Rain

The "Children in the Rain" were easily relatable and appealing for young students.   How fun to paint the umbrellas and raincoats.  The last addition to our painting was rain.  Each student determined which direction their rain was coming from and learned to apply it very consistently, maintaining believable rainfall.

Thanks to our art instructor, Carol Barbeau for providing the descriptions of these projects.

SmArts 2014-15 Part 1

When I first started teaching here at Brennan School, a grant became available in our area to incorpoarate the arts into the rest of the curricula.  Funded by the JW McConnell Foundation, ArtsSmarts afforded schools and teachers to hire local artists, purchase art supplies and offer programming that otherwise might not be possible.
Modeled after this same program, Portage la Prairie School Division currently offers a similar program: SmArts.  This year, here at Brennan School, we've hired Ms. Carol Barbeau to teach three blocks of art classes, one per term.

Colour Mixing

Term 1 consisted of colours and collage.  In the first class students learned about mixing colours by creating either bubbles or balloons.  Primary coloured circles were strategically drawn on water colour paper using water colour pencils, some of the circles over lapped to create the secondary colours.

 Collage

Next, the students created a collage out of cardstock and construction paper.  Tracing, cutting and colour selection were a large part of this project.  As a finishing touch, students enjoyed decorating their bowl or vase with metallic stickers.

 

 

 

 

Water Colour Farm Scenes

Thirdly, the younger students created a country scene of grazing sheep complete actual wool.  The older students painted a similar scene with a barn. 







Second and Third Terms' projects will be posted as the terms' art projects are completed.