Plaid Bunnies

I thought this was an adorable activity for very young students.  I doubt that their lines would be as straight as mine but they would love the bunny.  This was really simple, we were arranged by table, each table having complementary colors.  We all painted the warm color first then the cool color.  The teacher then read us a story, when the story was over we used a pattern to cut out the bunny form and glued him together.  A simple black marker let us complete the facial features and we had a wonderful spring decoration for mom to put on the fridge.

The integration that was presented in class was to learn about the common uses of plaid and to read a Language Arts story about a little girl who accidentally turned the whole world plaid.  Learning about different ways the create plaid especially weaving could give an extra aspect.

Spring Flowers

This project turned out better than I could have ever dreamed.  We started by taking a white or peach colored crayon or oil pastel to draw with.  Personally, I wouldn't use white because it's almost impossible to see and the peach turned out absolutely beautiful.  The hard part to this activity was that we weren't allowed to see what we were drawing.  Each of us stuck our utensil through a piece of paper that was about 3 X 6 inches which effectively blinded us  so we couldn't see what we were creating.  My flowers were supposed to be copies of the artwork of Georgia O'Keeffe, but they don't come very close to the original.  After completing our drawings we used very wet water colors to paint the entire page.  The idea was to ensure that there was no white remaining on our page.  The end effect was really pretty neat.

The integration which was presented in class was the study of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe.  Another idea with the flowers would be to have live flowers for the students to mimic.  This could be an ending project from a  science unit on parts of a flower.  It could also be changed so that you draw another type of object which gives limitless ideas for integration.  One that comes to mind is drawing musical instruments or tools that have changed history.

Hidden Safari

This was actually a lot more fun than I expected.  You start by drawing with a light blue colored pencil.  It is essential to use light blue.  We were all required to draw safari animals by turning the paper upside down and imitating an example.  I chose to do an elephant.  After completing the safari animal we then creating random patterns in warm colors to completely cover the page.  We kept adding patterns and colors until the naked eye no longer saw the blue elephant.  The magic of this activity is that by putting on red glasses you can see the elephant perfectly.  Unfortunately, my camera wouldn't take a good picture through the glasses so you can't see the elephant in this picture.

The natural integration of this project is Science, particularly habitats.  A book could also be read to accompany this activity thus integrating Language Arts.  The song "Going on a Bear Hunt" could be adapted and add a musical element to the project.

Story Book Page

This was one of the most creative and fun things we've done in class.  First we made our own "tissue" paper by thinning down tempre paint and splattering it onto 12 X 18 paper.  Next we designed a story book page as if it came out of the middle of a story.  We then used scissors or a razor blade to cut out each shape and glue them onto our page.  The end result is a beautiful collage.

This is automatically a link to Language Arts because it is part of a story, we read Eric Karle books because this is the method he uses to create his artwork.  It would be possible to make a lesson that required students to show awareness of habitat and characteristics of their animal characters, thus integrating a science aspect.