It's a Jungle out there!

With my English Art class, I am very crunched for time, and the attention span of some of them is quite short. It's been difficult for me to come up with meaningful projects that are do-able! I've found 2 projects in Mes premiers pas d'artiste (Heritage jeunesse), which I think I got through scholastic.
The first one I did was Birds of Paridise.

The kids chose 1 colour to paint their hand, printing it twice for the wings. They continued with the same colour and painted the head, body and tail. While the other kids were waiting for the paint station, they worked on making hibiscus flowers and palm fronds to decorate the display. After it was dry, on day 2(!), kids used pastels to draw patterns and designs on their birds. The BEST part was getting to use real feathers to add texture and interest to their birds. The kids were quite happy with how they turned out.

The second project in the jungle theme were VERY simple giraffes and zebras. I stole these from a birthday party my children were at. Kids from 2-5 were making them, so I figured they were do-able in less-than 20 minutes with 7 and 8 year olds! My fabulous birthday-party-planning-queen friend had a station at the party with everything pre-cut and ready to go. Bless her, she was more than happy that I took all of the leftovers!
For the head shape, she traced her kids' shoes (they are small!), then she found some fabulous fringe to use as the hair. The kids painted the stripes and spots, and glued on googly-eyes.. who can resist googly eyes?!

This week's jungle-themed project involves hippos! Last year I was looking at apple separators (like what they use to layer apples in a box) and thought it looked like rippling water. I did a fun project where the kids coloured hippo templates and cut them so they looked submerged in water, then added water-lilies. Cute, sure, (sorry, no pics!) But this year, I'm combining this idea with the other idea in the aforementioned book, and we are making standing hippos in the "river".
We started with a template of a hippo, very basic, on one half of a piece of cardstock. The children folded the paper, then cut it out to have a standing beast.
Next, we took tissue paper (various colours) and cut them into shapes and glued them with liquid glue onto the hippos.

The hippos were placed on the river and secured with large puddles of glue... this was the trickiest part to figure out, if anyone has suggestions for improvement, please share!

La Nuit Étoilée- Van Gogh

inspiration:

My new cricut! hee hee!

This is another project I did last year, borrowed from Art Projects for Kids. I actually did 3 versions of this one last year, with grades 1, 2 and 4, but this year's batch turned out the best, so far!
I started by giving each child a blue piece and a black half the size of construction paper. They had to use a ruler (tricky!) to draw a cityscape. The hardest part was cutting this out without cutting buildings off.. the goal was to have ONE piece of black to glue!

Before we glued, however, we used blues and yellows to create the stars, moon, and the movement of the sky. We talked about how the planet moves and the moon moves around the Earth. I love the "movement" on this one! This little gal moves a lot in class too!

I love it when I connect Fine Art with Science and French.. a 3-for-1 deal in this lesson!

Un Voyage dans l'Espace

- our new unit in French is about Space! I have been getting excited for this month as I have 3 bang-up projects to do with the kids.
The first one is the titular "Deep Space Sparkle" project from Patty's fabulous blog that I found last year. I can't quite find it now with her new formatting, but basically I meshed her ideas with the inspiration painting: Kandinsky's Several Circles No. 323 (Cercles divers No. 323):

Students started by tracing an odd number of circles in various sizes. They then colour them in with oil pastels.
Paint around them with two coats of black poster paint.
Meanwhile, the students made rocket ships using white glue and bits of boxes that they pieced together. These they painted with either cool or warm colours.
After the black paint was dried, the rockets were glued to the "space" background and I added some *sparkles* - I liked how sometimes the glue trailed a little creating a sort of meteor effect.

This is the second year in a row that I've done these and every one turns out amazing! It was the class's idea to mount them all together so that it looks like a universe, and I really appreciate that idea and the effect it produces!