Collagraph print hearts in 3rd grade

Collagraph printing combines collage with printmaking - gluing textures and shapes on to a printing plate, in this case a mat board scrap, and rolling with ink to be printed in multiples. This is a good time to clean out the scrap boxes, because you can use lots of materials - yarn, sandpaper, tagboard, corrugated cardboard, foil, and my favorite - craft foam.

In these examples, we used some discarded craft foam leftovers that created a negative shape heart, or students chose to rearrange into a new design. We also used discarded corrugated paper bulletin board border from decades ago, pulled from the trash bin last spring :).

This lesson took two class periods - in the first, we assembled the plates and selected our printing papers. In the second, we watched the demo and printed our papers. here is the way we set the tables up with "clean corners" for rubbing the prints and "messy middles" for rolling ink.

Shape Explosion! A one point perspective drawing

Fourth graders have been learning about one-point perspective as a way to create the illusion of space. Students used the handout to understand the vocabulary and practice their shapes to choose the one they wanted to use for their "shape explosion."

We also talked about the importance of unity and variety in our art. The handout is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop.

Symmetry monoprints, 2nd grade

Second graders practiced a monoprinting technique using folded paper and symmetrical shapes. A monoprint is a type of printmaking that creates a single, unique print, unlike other methods that create a series of prints. Great way to throw in some prefix learning - mono=one.
We discussed the variety of symmetrical shapes we were familiar with, and even talked about linear symmetry, since the shape we need to choose will be divided by a line. After drawing one half of our selected shape on the folded paper, we began our printing, one inch at a time. We paint an inch, print, paint an inch, print, so that the tempera doesn't absorb and dry before we can transfer it to the other side of the paper.