Roosters inspired by roosters inspired by Le Coq

The title isn't a mistake - these roosters aren't inspired by Picasso's Le Coq - they are inspired by a project another teacher did inspired by Picasso's Le Coq. Make sense? I saw this project here, and fell in love with the last little rooster - the simply colored one giving the thumbs up. The original poster did this project with grades 5/6, but I figured it would work well with my grade 3/4s. It was a great project because it let them draw something adorable and creative, and they had the freedom to put their own twist on it. Pastels on black paper were the perfect medium for this project. Love it!

Grade 5/6 totem poles

These are my favorite kinds of assignments - ones with loose guidelines, and tons of creative freedom. I wanted my students to explore mixing mediums, using a wash of a solid color of watercolor (in this case, brown) and then using pencil crayons to add detail, dimension and visual interest. I went with a totem pole theme, because in grade six, we are studying First Nations peoples. However, I encouraged them to stray away from typical totem poles, instead making totem poles based on things they loved - animals, TV shows, monsters, whatever inspired them. Some found reference drawings online, and others worked completely from their head. I adore them!!

3-D Mother's Day Letters (filled with flowers!)

I've been wanting to post this since Friday but waited just in case I have any moms from my class reading! For mother's day, my students made 3-D letters which they filled with dollar store flowers (a project I adapted from here.) Using the first letter of their mom's name, students made their 3D letter (using card stock and lots of tape!) Then, they filled them in with wet floral foam.

The last step was to fill them with flowers!

Beautiful, right? I made one for my mother in law, and one for myself as well! They'd look super cute hanging in the middle of a frame wall.

Hope everyone had a great mother's day!

What you can make with 2,000 sewing pins and a lot of patience

This is a project I did a few months ago. The only reason I haven't shared it yet is because its so difficult to photograph! All of the little pins cast shadows when I take the pictures, so I'll never be able to get a totally accurate-to-real-life photo. But at any rate - here's what you can make if you too have thousands of sewing pins and a lot of patience!

Here's a simple breakdown of the process - pretty self explanatory. I pinned the letters onto a foamy poster board, which I painted first using acrylic paint. Then, I printed out my lettering and cut it out, the pinned all around it.

Very time consuming, but easy to do in front of a TV. All in all, it took me probably about 10-12 hours to complete. It's crazy how much patience I can have for certain projects, while having so little patience for other things!

I should mention that I saw the idea for this online about a year ago, and can't locate the original.. it was executed differently and had different text, but was the same basic idea. If you have seen it, feel free to link me to it so I can source it!

Grade 1/2 portraits

These are some adorable portraits that I did with grades 1/2, to give to their mothers for mother's day. Portrait drawing is such a good activity for kids of any age. Kids in grade 1/2 reeealllly need all of the direction possible, as it's often one of the first times they've drawn a portrait of themselves. the only thing I'll change next time is to explicitly show them how to make their portraits smile!

Once they had finished their portraits, they cut them out and glued them onto scrapbook paper. Kids with extra time cut out paper hearts and decorations for their portraits.

I love how these turned out - I think they're absolutely beautiful, and really hope the moms love them!

Egpytian glue portraits

Sorry for the absence! I've been sick for the better part of the past week, and with that came a pounding headache and light sensitivity. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time editing photos for my blog! I have so many projects to get to, though.

Here's a fun project I did with my grade 5's.They are currently studying ancient Egypt, and I wanted to do a portrait study with them.

Students used a computer period to do a study of ancient Egyptian profile portraits. They sketched out an idea that they were happy with, and then we did a guided draw of the facial details once we were back in class.

Once students had finished their drawing (in pencil), they used glue to outline their drawings. The next day, they used chalk pastels to fill them in. The finishing touch was a few jewels, which they glued on as accessories. They're beautiful!!