Cactus Painting

Multiple layer cactus paintings. I have an extensive plant collection including Cacti and Succulents. The first day of this lesson I brought in some cacti and living stones for the students to look at and touch. Students practiced drawing cacti from pictures and real life. 

Students painted green paper one day by mixing blue and yellow directly on their paper. They also painted a background paper with a red to yellow sunset.

On the back of their green painted paper they drew a cactus then cut it on. After gluing it to their sunset page, they stamped black "needles" onto their cactus with a small pieces of cardboard dipped into black paint.

I showed the students how cacti grow flowers that bloom for a short amount of time and some of the girls wanted to add flowers to their pictures. I love how these turned out!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Here are some of the quick projects we did for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Kindergarten Shape Robots

Students mixed red and yellow directly on a large piece of paper so they could experience color mixing. After covering the whole page with colors, they drew lines and texture into the paint with q-tips by scraping some of the paint away. The next day, students cut their painted paper in to shapes (squares, rectangles, long rectangles). They arranged shapes on their page to make a robot and then glued on smaller shapes for the face and buttons. Finally, they added some more small details with white crayons.

Bundled Penguins

A friend of mine (www.loveanji.com) donated a bunch of bright paper scraps to my classroom. We used this paper to make scarves and ear muffs for these adorable penguins. 

The next day we used q-tips to dot the paper with "snow". 

Snowflakes

Mandalas with liquid watercolor.

I find liquid watercolors really easy to distribute and clean up and gives the student great practice with painting.

Origami snowflakes: Students spent the first day making their individual origami pieces. I showed them 4 types of folds, which they had to make multiples. After that, students could make up their own folds or continue making multiples of those previous pieces. The next class, students assembled pieces in a radial pattern, mimicking a snowflake.

Christmas Time!

Middle School Gingerbread Houses...

Pretty cute one day reindeer puppets with first grade.

First time working with liquid glue... dot dot not a lot!

Thanksgiving!

Kindergarten and First graders drew a picture of their favorite Thanksgiving food and I had them describe to me step by step how they would make the food. Some of them were hilarious! (Found this lesson here)

This was a really fun project (found here) I did with Kindergarten-Second grade. They all loved it! I read the following Thanksgiving story to them and as we got to each color, I gave them a bead to add to their bracelet or necklace.

With this bracelet you will know,

The first Thanksgiving that was long, long ago.

The Pilgrims set sail from far away

On the Mayflower with tall white sails.

They sailed many days across the ocean blue.

The seas were rough, but the ship came through.

At last they spotted land so green. 

They were so happy they cheered and screamed.

The first year was so difficult and black.

Many died and wished that they could go back.

But the Native Americans gave them a hand

And helped them survive in the strange new land.

They decided to celebrate in a special way

And that became the first Thanksgiving Day.

They prepared a feast with turkeys brown

And red cranberries that they had found.

Yellow corn that they had learned to grow

And orange pumpkin pies, don’t you know!

But before they ate the turkey and dressing,

They all held hands for a thankful blessing.

Turkey Drawings!

And these cute "geometric feather" turkeys!