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:

Artsonia savings thru Dec. 14

Parents - our online art gallery Artsonia is offering 25% off one regularly priced item until December 14 - use the code HOLIDAYFUNDS15 at checkout. There is also a sale on holiday cards through November 30.
We have been uploading fall and winter themed art in many classes and will continue uploading after the Thanksgiving break, so please stop by and check out the products available for your gift giving needs! Thanks for your support.

http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=147943

Snowy Evergreens collage & print, 2nd grade

These colorful landscapes were inspired by the beautiful illustrations of Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts. There were mixed feelings among the characters regarding the colorful "evergreen" trees in the famous Charlie Brown animated special, but I was always enamored with their bright & bold style. 

We began by drawing evergreen shapes like pine, fir, cypress, and spruce, then we added cones and berries some of these trees produce. We chose warm or cool color Fadeless brand paper - one of my favorite art supplies! The snowy background is created from printing tempera coated bubble wrap, and we finished it off with a doily "snow cloud" and some footprints in the snow.

Scraps make great "half trees" for the edges and folding the paper makes the trees symmetrical while cutting the cutting time in half. :)