Hidden Safari

For this project, we chose an animal that lives in the safari. I chose a zebra. We then had to turn the picture of the animal we chose upside down. Once we had the picture turned upside down, we took a sky blue colored pencil and drew a picture of the animal that was also upside down. Once we had the picture completed, we turned both pictures right side up to see if they were almost identical. Once we had completed this step, we took Orange, Red, and Yellow colored pencils or crayons and drew patterns using shapes or other patterns to create a camouflage over the animal we drew. I chose to do orange triangles, red circles- both ones that were not filled in and ones that were filled in, and yellow swirls to help create a camouflage over my zebra. Once we were completely done creating our camouflage, we had someone look at it our picture to make sure you could not tell what the animal was. Once we were done with this, we glued our picture onto a piece of 9 x 12 sheet of construction paper and then wrote three clues as to what our safari animal is.

Before we started the designing our project, we made a set of red classes that we could use to check and see if our animal is able to be seen clearly. We took a piece of read construction paper and used a traceable patter to cut a whole where the eye and nose pieces are. We then took a piece of cellophone and either taped or stapled it to the back of our construction paper. We used these classes to help check our progress during the camouflaging stage of our project.

Extension Activity: You could use this same concept of drawing a picture and then camouflaging it with a pattern for other subjects or units as well. You could do this for a unit on water animals, desert animals, Native American Animals, or about any other unit you can come up with. You can also have the students draw more detail into the subject instead of just the animal and then do the camouflage over top. 

Eric Carle Story Collage

For this project, we first watched a video on how Eric Carle makes the colored paper that he uses. Then we read on of Eric Carle's Stories.Then we used his techniques and wetted a piece of paper with water and then put daps of blue, yellow, red, white, black colors that were each mixed with a harder before hand. Once we had the dabs of paint on the sheet, we took paint brushes and mixed the colors together and covered the entire sheet. We then did different designs on the sheet using the points of a paint brush, or different items like beads, a pattern sheet, or sponges. Once we were done with these, we had to let them dry completely. While these were drying for a couple of days, we designed a pattern on a sheet of construction paper and got the story sheet ready to go. Once the sheets were dry, we traced our shapes on the colored papers, cut them out and put them together on the construction to make our story overlapping the art. To finish up the project, we did a simple sentence as if it were in illustration in a story.

The sentence in the thought bubble says: Misty, Sassy, and Wizzer: "Wish our family would arrive to spend forever in Heaven with us!!"

Extension Activity: As an extension activity, you could chose another Author of a book or series of books and have the students create a story page based off of the techniques they used.  An extension lesson that you could do is use is Beverly Cleary and her ideas behind the story lines. Beverly bases her storys on real world experiences. After you go over her ideas and read one of her stories, you can have the students do a one page story illustration relating to an experience from their own personal lives. 

Van Gogh Tissue Collage

The tissue collage is also based off of the techniques that Vincent Van Gogh used in his "Starry Night" painting. For this project, I chose different colors of tissue paper and cut out different shapes to use in my collage. I then placed the tissue paper on a black piece of construction paper and used some tempre glue to keep them in place and give the project a glossy look. While this was drying, I cut out a design on blue and red construction paper to represent the sky view of a city. Once the buildings were cut out, I used black and silver permanent markers to design the windows on the buildings. Once I was done with this part of the project, I used three different colors of Oil Pastels to create movement and emphasis the swirls of the tissue paper. The final step was pasting the city design onto the background. Once this was done, I framed the art work using a different color of construction paper.

Extension Activity:

An extension activity for this project could be using Van Gogh's concepts like the overlapping swirls from his "Starry Night" painting with one color scheme. You could use different shades of one color for the background, two complimentary colors, or a different color scheme entirely. You can also use the same open idea for the background colors, but with a specific design for the close up view, like the design of their yard, or another scene entirely. 

Van Gogh Finger Painting

This project is based off of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" Painting. This project was done with finger paint useing the colors of blue, yellow, red, white, and black. This finger painting project was based off of the concepts Vincent Van Gogh used in his "Starry Night" painting. I started out painting my picture by using red and yellow to make a sky that resembles a sun rise. I used my fingers and swirled the colors together with some white. I also used a little blue and black to darken some areas of the sky to show resemble a little bit of night that was left. Instead of doing the tree that is in Van Gogh's painting, I decided to do a picture in rememberance of 9/11 and did the World Trade Centers and other buildings in the front, behind the buildings I did some green hills in the middle section and then the sky in the background.  To mix the green hills, I combined yello and blue together.

Extension Activity:



For an extension activity, you could have the students use the same concepts from Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting only using a couple of colors. You could do a finger painting with different shades of complimentary colors and focus on the techniques used in the sky line. You could also do a painting only using shades of one single color or a different color scheme with these same techniques.