Paper Collage Creatures

It's been so long since I've posted, I'm not going to even offer any excuses. But needless to say, we've had a crazy busy summer (in a fun way) and I've spent lots of quality time with my kiddos--and I've got a pretty good tan. Since I've taken a break from teaching this summer, I thought I'd try to catch up on posting some past projects. Here's one I did with a class where I modified the fabric collage project (click here to see) to make it more fun for the younger ones (5-7). I had pre-cut shape templates for several animals and they got to pick their animal and their papers. They did the tracing, cutting, arrangement, gluing and accents.

Covered it all with a good coat of Mod Podge

I tied in a short lesson on using shapes when drawing. We always do a fun exercise with the felt board before we start our project and see what kind of things we can make out of our basic shapes; like houses, trains, trees, etc. Then I show them how simple it is to draw a penguin and a mouse by breaking it down into shapes.

Faux Batik

Here's a great project idea that I got from DickBlick. I've done these with kindergarten through 5th grade children. It does require a little more work on the teacher's part though because it's difficult to wash the glue off without washing off too much of the paint. I washed the glue myself and also ironed and hemmed the edges with fabric glue. For more details see:
http://cdn.dickblick.com/lessonplans/pdfs/gluebatik.pdf

Last week of spring art

What a great semester! I enjoyed getting to know all your little artists and have had such a wonderful time with them this spring. We wrapped up the year with collages. Throughout the year, anytime students had extra time at the end of class, I always had paper available to do a small rendering of what we had done that day. I encouraged students to stick to a theme-some di ABCs, fruit, things they liked, etc. We spent our last class finishing up any unfinished projects and assembling the collages. Reminder that make up classes are Monday and the Thursday class still has one more week for my "make-up". Thank you so much for letting me teach your children!