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:

• Chalk Pastels
• Stiff brush (we use our old tempera brushes)
• scissors
• construction paper for background (we used white 9″x12″)
• construction paper cut approx. 4″x6″ for making stencils
• optional: ready-made stencils

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.