Ms. Malone's art room is going to the birds!

So my second graders have begun working on collages this week. I wanted to make it fun and simple, so I decided to have them create a flock of birds. Only two classes so far have started, once they are all finished I will take a picture of the whole flock, but for now, here are a few of our little chicks...

I gave each student a pre-cut piece of construction paper, and put a pile of pre-cut patterned paper on their table. The student picked out their patterned paper and glued it to the construction paper, and then set the whole thing aside while they worked on their birds. Using more construction paper, they created their birds. If they showed good craftsmanship by not having excess glue, they could choose three feathers to use as the bird's tail. I hot-glued everything together for them, and then we displayed the birds in the hall. They had so much fun with them, and having the feathers as an incentive to finish it neatly was great too!

Paper Pulp Ornaments

I don't know about you, but every year, my scrap paper box gets really full, too full in fact, and eventually I resort to throwing some away so that it doesn't overflow. Last year I came up with a great lesson that uses up lots of the scraps, keeping me from throwing it away. I had my kindergarteners create paper pulp ornaments.

We took the paper and separated it by color, and then ripped the paper into little pieces. Next, we soaked the paper in water overnight, and then ran it through a blender. Once it was pulped, we used cookie cutters as molds to create the ornaments. with the cookie cutters laying on a towel, the students piled the pulp into the middle, forming whatever patterns or designs they wanted. Next, we used sponges to press the pulp together and soak up as much water as we could. After poking a hole in the ornament, we put the still-wet pulp on the heater to dry overnight. You can add peppermint oil to to the pulp before the students use it if you would like. This helps in two ways. The first is obvious, it makes the ornament smell good, the second benefit of this is that it helps retard molding of the wet paper pulp if you need to store if for more than a few days.

Paper Coil Sculptures

This is one of the projects that a second grade class completed for the school's art show. We started off by creating a very shallow "box" or "tray" from a piece of black construction paper. I gave them a 12" square piece of black construction paper and showed them how to cut the corners and fold it up to create the box. Then I gave them 1/2" wide strips of paper to create walls within the box. I taught them to fold the ends over and glue the folded ends to the sides of the box. Then we raided the scrap paper box. I demonstrated to the students how to cut strips of various widths of paper and curl them around a pencil or crayon. Then the edge of the coils are dipped into glue and the coil is placed within the box. Each separate area created by the walls in the box is filled in with a different color.

Where are the Wild Things???? They are in the art room!

The fourth graders in my school are finishing up a collage, based on the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I read them the story, and then the students picked out 2 pieces of 12x18 construction paper in the colors of their choice. One of the papers was cut down to 10x16, and the students glue the papers together so that there is a "frame" around the edge. Next, the students got to pick out a piece of animal print paper that is used to create the body. Next, the students used scrap paper to create the head, arms, legs,etc. of their wild thing, and then glued down wiggle eyes. Finally, the students glued down foam shapes in the border. This is a lesson that I found in the Sax catalogue, and have done it for years. The students are always excited to do this lesson.