Winter in the Forest, 5th grade

I love the beauty of nature in winter. Although you will find me buried under blankets indoors the entire cold weather season, it is still the most beautiful season :).

I chose 5th grade for this lesson because much of their curriculum involves precise drawing and complicated steps - I felt like they would really enjoy a fun lesson with painted papers and stamp printing! I saw some beautiful acorns and mushrooms over at Painted Paper blog (http://paintedpaperintheartroom.blogspot.com ) and decided we should try some. We spent one class texturizing a large paper with neutral color tempera, using brushes, sponges, and plastic combing tools. We also stamp printed our backgrounds with pine needles and berries, made from cardboard strips and pencil ends. These were left to dry until the following week.

Next, we cut out the shapes of forest tidbits - acorns, mushrooms, twigs, pine cones - and some kids also made animals or tracks. We glued them down to appear as they would if we were looking at the forest floor during the first snowfall of winter, and the final step was a few printed snowflakes using foam sticker stamps and white tempera.

The snowflake stampers are little plastic cups with foam stickers and white tempera brushed on: