Reductive printmaking for winter

Fifth graders work on the advanced skill called reductive printmaking during this part of our second unit/9 weeks. In years past, we have used the subject matter of self-portraits for this lesson (see examples here), but this year, time snuck up on us and we chose a fun theme that we could spend less time on the drawing phase and have the prints complete before the end of the semester. (Don't worry, we'll still do self-portraits in another media.) So, day 1 we brainstormed for images of the winter season and chose one to draw large on our foam printing plates. We printed them 4 times with red printing ink, like so:

The following week, we drew into our plates a second time, creating details, patterns and textures, then, after the unfortunate fire drill(!), we printed the same sheets with black ink and voila! It was fun registering the printing plate the second time, to make sure it ended up directly over the previous print. After they dry, we will number and sign them and each student will save one print in their portfolios and the rest will be taken home to share for the holidays! Please excuse the hazy picture quality - the fog seems to have rolled in from outside this morning.