Dear Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy Queen by Sophie

“Dear Tooth Fairy,

When you leave me money for my tooth, could you leave me a letter too? PS I lost a tooth on the sofa.”  In this charming story by Alan Durant, a girl writes letters back and forth to the tooth fairy.

In class, we used simple shapes, such as triangles and circles to draw the fairy.  Her wand is a toothbrush!  We outlined them in sharpie and colored them with oil pastels.  The last steps were a watercolor wash and glitter glue for the stars and the crown. Check out her fancy shoes!

If you are trying this at home, you can try drawing the tooth fairy in a similar style or make up your own idea of what you think the tooth fairy looks like!  You can use pencils, crayons, markers or paint – whatever art supplies you have at your house.

You can even write letters to the tooth fairy.  What do you want to know?  How many tooth fairies are there?  What does the tooth fairy do with the tooth?  The most important thing to do is to have fun with your creations and your letters!

 

Immense Insects

Guess I should qualify “immense” to mean the insect, not the size of the paper.

Fourth Graders studied the work of Georgia O’Keefe and learned vocabulary words such as magnification, organic forms, and composition. We knew that Georgia painted close up flowers but we choose insects for our subject matter. Of course the boys loved this turn of events, but the girls surprisingly loved their bugs too!

Students were required to draw their bug touching the sides of the paper and/or going off the edges of the paper completely. Many students soon understood that the more they zoomed in on their insect the more abstract yet interesting their painting became. Paintings were first drawn in pencil, retraced in black Sharpie and finally painted with semi moist watercolor paint.

What sort of lesson have you taught using Georgia O’Keefe as a starting off point? Have you made insect themed art?

Watercolor Flowers

Second grade students painted these beautiful, bright flowers.  As a jumping off point, we used Donna Hughes video “Art Lessons For Children”.

It’s a wonderful video lesson for learning how to use watercolor.  Kids learn how to move the paint around on the paper, as well as mix colors.

After the paint dries, we draw the details of the flowers with sharpies, experimenting with different pattern and texture.  Some of the kids even played with depth by adding black areas.

In the past, we sometimes have added shrinky dink bugs stuck on with dimensional foam tape, just for fun. This time we just ran out of time, but I think they are stunning – with or without bugs.

“Bookish” Owls

Third graders designed and drew these owls on recycled paper from books that were destined for the big dumpster outside of school.  Every now and then, the Librarian “weeds” books that are outdated. Personally, I think the books make great art supplies.

In our classroom, students had a wide range of owl resources to look at while drawing and then brainstormed adding patterns.  After going over the pencil lines with sharpie, the owls were either painted with liquid watercolor or colored with markers.

If you are going to try to create these owls at home, find something interesting to draw and paint on.  It doesn’t have to be old book pages.  Draw your owl, filling up the space as much as possible, add some cool patterns and trace your lines with a sharpie.  At this point you can add color with markers, crayons, watercolor paints, anything you like.  Or leave them black and white.  You’re the artist!  The most important thing is to have fun!

These owls brought to you by Reagan, Annaliese, and Henry.

 

Leapin’ Lizards

By Jenna F.

We started this fun painting project with some guided drawing lessons.  We drew several kinds of lizards using this resource – 123 Draw Pets by Freddie Levin. 
We drew our lizards on a nicer, heavy weight drawing paper and I really encouraged the students to draw large!  Next, the students traced over their pencil lines with black Sharpie.

The details such as the stripes and dots were drawn with white oil pastels.

Then we painted!  At each table, I set out liquid watercolors in warm color sets or cool color sets and a small cup of kosher salt.

For the watercolor demonstration, I showed kids wet-on-wet:  painting one color, then while the paint is still wet, adding another on top to blend.While the paint is still wet, sprinkle some salt to create small twinkles of star-like dots.

Wet-on-dry: Since this lessons takes 2-3 classes, once one section of the chameleon is dry, they can then paint over that section to create spots, stripes, dots, etc. as well as the branch and leaves.

Look at the fun lips and eyelashes!  First graders add the cutest details!