I firmly believe it is important for our children to learn about the incredible diversity of earth's animals and how many are endangered and which ones may soon die out. This lesson helps students learn about animals that live in the arctic biome, such as polar bears and the arctic fox. This lesson uses black construction paper and pastels. Children LOVE drawing with pastels but a few warnings are in order as they can be VERY messy! I always warn my students to work from the top down in coloring the northern lights and also not to smudge the chalk by carefully lifting their hand up after drawing. It WILL get all over their fingers. (Oil pastels can also be used). I recommend beginning by searching Google images using the key words "northern lights" to look at beautiful examples of this unusual phenomena. Using pastels on black construction paper, have them draw their own version of the northern lights, coloring all the way down the black paper. Next, spray the chalk drawing with hair spray, if possible to seal the chalk and prevent smudging. Next, I would have my students do research on one or two arctic animals. I had a simple sheet of questions asking: 1) What is the name of your animal? 2) What environment/habitat does it live in (ocean, tundra, icebergs, etc. 3) What does your animal eat? 4) What is its place in the food chain (predator, prey, etc.) 5) Why is it endangered? 6) What are three things we personally can do to save it from extinction? (This can be a complicated answer and should require some deeper thinking instead of "just stop killing them." An animal such as the polar bear is impacted by climate change and loss of sea ice, so what can we do to stop climate change? The final step involves adding black silhouettes of a hill, land, trees, and the animal itself. These are then glued to the bottom of the page, being careful not to make the silhouettes so big that they cover up the beautiful northern lights. Here are some good links to use: https://www.enchantedlearning.com/coloring/arcticanimals.shtml and https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/arctic and https://www.un-habitat.org/endangered-animals-arctic-region/
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January in Michigan brings biting cold and lots of snow - time to get outside to build snowmen, go sledding, snowboarding and skiing. The week before the holidays we watched the delightful 1982 animated classic "The Snowman" which shares the story of a little boy's adventures with a snowman he builds. This is no "Frosty the Snowman" movie and features excellent hand drawn original animation and music. Next students painted the snowmen and snow leaving room to add details the week we returned from break. I stressed the importance of showing their snowmen having some wild winter fun! Then we glued on cloth scarves, hats, sleds, skiis, and other details. No boring-just-standing-around snowmen for us!
I began this unit with an excellent old video from Reading Rainbow that showed the painting of a stylistic sunset carefully painted on a hide followed by the reading of the book The Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola (should be available on YouTube or just read this lovely book yourself). Lower el students then learned how to paint a sunset step by step using vibrant colored tempera cakes (week one). The second week they used different types of lines and pictographs to decorate different sizes of teepees drawn with markers on tan colored construction paper. The third week, we talked about foreground, middleground and background (to add depth). Then students were shown how to cut out and glue the smaller teepees higher on the horizon line as if they were farther away (background) with the middle sized ones placed mid-way up on the grass (middleground) and finally the larger ones were glued lower down toward the bottom of the page (foreground).
Meanwhile, upper elementary students watched a Power point showing various authentic Native American war and medicine shields, as well as hides and teepees with painted pictograph designs. Students learned that pictographs were used by Native Americans to record important events. Then on to creating beautifully woven Lakota dancing shields! Students traced and cut out a large dinner plate sized circle in brown, tan or black paper, folded the circles in half and cut inch-wide sections from the fold almost to the edge of the circle. Next they wove colored strips in a pattern filling their shields ("over under, over under"). Week two, I either read an actual "book" with a pictograph story or showed this brief slide show with examples of pictographs used in every day Native American life. https://www.slideshare.net/ChrisNoel1/native-american-44232313 Then students "wrote" their own story using pictographs which they drew on the alternate woven squares on their shields using pencil then sharpies and oil pastels. Week three they decided on their personal animal totem to add to their shield. Their animal was drawn on copy paper, filled with pictographs and designs, then outlined in sharpie and colored with markers and/or colored pencil. Week four, they carefully cutout and glued their totem animal onto the middle of their shield, adding yarn ending with hand made feathers. Art students this month embarked on an interesting journey – a unit on dinosaurs! Third through fifth grades began by taking a virtual trip to a museum using our new Virtual Reality glasses. WOW! Students were very excited seeing dinosaur skeletons come alive and slowly move or swim around the room as a curator gave interesting facts about each dinosaur. First through fifth graders then created dinosaurs in their habitat while learning some art basics such as shading, how to create a landscape, and painting techniques. Lower el students watched Dazzle the Dinosaur by Marcus Pfister. Upper el watched Bill Nye the Science Guy. Then students followed a step-by-step lesson on how to draw and paint a landscape, followed by drawing their dinosaurs the following week. Third, fourth and fifth graders did research on chromebooks finding interesting information about fossils, what place their dinosaur had in the food chain, and a variety of interesting facts. We visited www.enchantedlearning.com for their research. Toward the end of the unit, teams of students were able to be paleontologists taking a bunch of wooden "bones" that they assembled into complete T-Rex and Stegosaurus skeletons. This took problem solving (no directions) and teamwork.
Kindergarten and Junior Kindergartners listened to different books in the Elmer the Elephant series: Elmer the Elephant, Elmer in the Snow and Elmer and the Kangaroo by David McKee. I use these books to reinforce ideas such as kindness, encouragement and sharing. After talking about the story, students layered tissues paper squares onto a paper plate to mimic Elmer's patchwork skin. Next they added colorful ears and a rolled up trunk. We reviewed how to safely staple to protect little fingers. Wearing their masks, each child left eager to see the world through Elmer's eyes. Masks are always a hit!
Second graders at Oxbow just completed animal game cards for their "Guess the Animal" game. I laid out stacks of informational animal cards that included facts about an animal including its habitat, diet, characteristics, and classification. Each student made 8 to 10 cards drawing animals in their habitat, then glued them to a colorful paper and wrote clues about their animals.. "I have scales, I eat insects, I can curl into a ball, I live in the deserts in Mexico - What am I? (an armadillo) The best part was finding a partner to play the game with! They delighted in quizzing one another. What a fun way to engage students suffering from summer fever! Each student left with a stack of cards to take home to play with their families over the summer.
First and second grade students leapt at the chance to create dragon masks. Using paper plates painted with rainbow patterns, students created Chinese dragons using curled paper strips and other details. It was a joy to see them so excited as they dived into completing these delightful rainbow colored masks.
It is April and time for our yearly second grade land form culminating project. I began with a Powepoint reviewing the different types of land forms the students had learned about in their classrooms. They studied everything from how mountains and hills are formed, to learning about the desert, how valleys and canyons are formed, plains, peninsulas, rivers, lakes, islands, and even volcanoes. After this quick review, it was time to get to mixing up their own salt dough! Many hands measured then squished and mixed the sticky salt dough. As soon as their hands got sticky, the students could barely contain their excitement! Next they pinched and formed the dough into mountains, islands and curving rivers. By the end of our hour in art, each child had created their own land forms. After a week of drying, we painted them using tempera paint. What a great way to complete this earth science unit!
Salt Dough Recipe: 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup hot water. Mix till consistency of bread or pizza dough. Make your creation. Let dry until hardened (it takes a week). Paint. To reinforce our March is Reading month theme of Rainbows of Kindness, my kindy, first and second grade students created Rainbow Ribbons of Kindness. First, we brainstormed things we could say or do to be kind and helpful to each other such as "Do you want to come sit with me" or "your hair looks nice." Next, I showed them how to draw wavy, parallel lines and paint them with rainbow colors. What a lovely way to reinforce kindness in our caring community!
The world of Pop Art is difficult to explain to elementary students. They understand realism, portraits and landscapes but the crazy ideas of Pop Art often befuddle my young students. Last year we looked at the art of Andy Warhol, and Keith Haring. This year, the focus is on Roy Lichtenstein portraits and Vassily Kandinsky. To kick this off, upper el students created pop art portraits in the cartoon-ish style of Roy Lichtenstein. The basics of creating a good portrait were explored, but then the creativity began when they added their own personal expressions (Wow, Kazoom, Boom).
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March 2024
AuthorMy name is Mrs. Krupa and I'm an elementary art teacher at Oxbow Elementary. I'm a professional harpist turned art teacher of 20 years. I'll share art lessons and ideas on these pages, what works and doesn't. Enjoy! Categories
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