After creating chalk pastel stencil art with multiple classes last week I had a lot of colorful used stencils. I sprayed them with fixative (Aqua Net unscented hairspray) and glued them to construction paper.
Students outlines stencil opening with chalk pastel and brushes color inward.
Used die-cut and hand-cut stencils make another kind of Valentine.
Which is more beautiful- stencil art or used stencil art? I can’t decide…Happy Valentine’s Day!
5th graders used chalk pastels and cut paper stencils to make overlapping hearts.
These beautiful chalk pastel stencils take only one 40 minute session!
Materials:
Instructions:
Fold the small rectangle in half. Draw a half heart on the fold and cut out.
Students can use both the positive and negative shapes from homemade stencils.
Color around the edges of the cut out 'window'.
Now take the stiff brush and brush the colored pastel into the stencil ‘window’.
These pink hearts 'stencils' were made on the school die-cut machine.
Lift up the stencil. Students will ooh and aah if they have never tried this process before! Now shift the stencil and repeat the process. Encourage students to overlap.
Now take the positive shape and color the edge with pastel. Place on the background paper, and brush the color outward onto the paper.
Positive shape can be used as a stencil.
Nice composition and color.
We reused our die-cut stencils for three classes. We just colored and colored again around the edges. Tell the students to relax – it’s going to look beautiful.
Students can also color the background.
Another stencil made on the school die-cut machine.
This student used his stencils to make a bird.
This method would be very interesting with cut paper snowflakes or doilies.
Experiment with doilies.
Try a homemade snowflake stencil.
Minimize the mess: ask students to tap their excess chalk pastel dust onto a piece of newspaper.
What to do with all those used colorful stencils? Try this used stencil collage project. Double the art fun!
This method came from the San Diego Museum of Art 2010 Educator’s Art Fair. The lesson can easily be adapted for all grades K-6.
I have admired the fabulous yarn-wrapped cardboard fish mobiles shown on a couple of elementary art blogs. I wanted to do the project with kindergarten as part of a whole-school ocean-themed art installation to be hung later this spring….
Kindergarteners created yarn-wrapped cardboard fish. Allow two 40-minute classes.
Materials:
Part one:
We started with thin cardboard rectangles about 8″x10″. We did a dot-to-dot directed draw of a simple fish shape.
Kinders started with a dot-to-dot directed draw. Don’t make base of tail too narrow or fish may rip.
Then the students cut out the fish shape. Because we used thin cardboard, 95% were able to cut the fish without help.
Now kinders add four dots to the top edge of the fish, and four dots to the bottom. A few kids made their dots too close together….so I’d say 90% did this task independently.
The kids use scissors to cut slits along the edges of the fish, stopping at the dots. 100% were able to do this task independently.
Now color both sides of the fish. We used regular crayons (I wish I had construction paper crayons to brighten the dull gray cardboard…next year!).
Part two:
Students finished coloring both sides of their fish. Each received a six-foot length of yarn (cut by me, lest you think I didn’t have ANY prep on this project…..) and wrapped the yarn around and around and up and down across their fish.
Wrapping the yarn was tricky for some students. I found out kids were more successful with the yarn wrap when I modeled it in front of the room (as opposed to on my document camera). I’d say about 70% could do this independently on their first attempt.
Optional: glue on eyes.
To hang the fish: use a hole punch to make one hole near the top edge and one at the bottom edge. Open a large paper clip to form a ‘S’ hook.
Open paper clip connects fish for mobile.
Connect your chain. I was able to make a hanging chain of five fish.
Inspiration for this projects comes from this post on the Fem Manuals blog and this post on the Deep Space Sparkle blog.
I believe that a lot of my lesson plans (at all grade levels) could be tweaked to increase student independence.
What do you think of ‘kinderpendence’?
Kinders are making stick puppets. This is their first project using white (Elmer’s) glue, and the whole project is designed to teach gluing skills.
Students first practice opening and closing the (orange) tip of the glue bottle. They learn the bottle is closed when the hard white tip peeks up from the bottle. Then I pass out cardboard.
Take large cardboard and one small cardboard. Put a dot off glue on a corner of the large cardboard, top with the small piece. Press hard to stick pieces together.
We use the ’10 second gluing’ technique. Students press the pieces hard against the table while counting aloud to 10 (is there anything cuter than a class of 5 year olds earnestly counting together?).
We test our gluing by waving the glued pieces in the air while counting to three. Result: 95% hold together. The one or two that come apart provide the opportunity for more glue practice.
We glue on all four cardboard ‘limbs’. Next students write their names on a Popsicle stick and glue it on for a handle. Kids will need to use 2-3 dots of glue and count to 20 to get that stick stuck on.
Add a bit of cut yarn for hair and draw on a face with sharpie.
Cut out paper and glue on to make clothes for puppets. Instruct kids to apply glue stick to both papers they are stick together. This might sound like a waste of glue, but there is a much stronger bond. Don’t want any puppet wardrobe malfunctions!
The kindergarten made their wheel drawings today.
Kindergarteners use circle templates as a starting point for drawing wheeled vehicles.
This is one of those lesson plans that is perfect for a single 40-minute kindergarten class. It takes no prep or clean up. Kindergarteners love cars and trucks. The use of circle tracers (various sizes of jar lids) for the wheels makes this lesson highly successful.
Materials:
Instructions:
Pass out paper, pencils, erasers and various sizes of circle tracers. Ask students to draw something with wheels. Remind them to add a background or road. After 10-15 minutes, pass out crayons and allow students to color in their designs.
Kindergarteners often draw themselves and family members in the vehicles.
You may see drawings of all kinds of imaginary wheeled vehicles. Great!
I have a computer and projector in my art room and try to teach with powerpoints. You can download my kindergarten wheels powerpoint here.
This would also be a great substitute lesson plan.
The kindergarten wheels lesson was inspired by this fabulous lesson on trucks and tractors at Deep Space Sparkle.
