Cardinals Come Calling

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.

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.

Winter Wonders

During the cold, sometimes blustery month of January, my primary and intermediate art classes created projects to coincide with the weather.  Now our hall walls give one a chilly feeling.

 Winter Trees

My grades 4 - 7 class created winter trees.  We first read about Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp and looked at an example of his painting as pictured in The Usborne ART Treasury by Rosie Dickins.  Then we created our own versions.   It took a couple of classes as we did the landscape one day and had to leave it to dry.  During the next art class we painted the trees using watery black paint.  We dropped globs of paint on our paper where we wanted our tree trunks to be and blew through a straw, first upwards to create a trunk, then diagonally to create branches, shrubs and bushes.  We didn't always have control of the direction the branches went, so we had some surprises.

 

The Best Snowman Ever

My grades 1 - 3 art project was inspired by Kathy Waldner's blog (not sure what her blog spot is).  We read The Best Snowman Ever by Margery Cuyler, then proceeded to draw our own snow people with oil pastels on blue construction paper.  The girls' people turned into queens, princesses and the like, while the boys stayed more traditional, with the exception of one snow-soldier.  All of them seem rather happy.

 

Mosaic Snowflakes

This art class started with a discussion of warm and cool colours and how they make is feel.  I used the book 50 Christmas things to Make and Do by Minna Lacey and Rebecca Gilpin, another Usborne book.  Contrary to it's title, this book has almost as many wintery ptojects in it as it does Christmassy ones.  Beforehand I cut shades of blues and purples into various sizes triangles.  Students were given 12 x 18  pieces of white art paper and the triangles, were instructed to designed snowflakes.  The results are quite "cool" to say the least.