Currently, my eyeballs feel like they are made of broken glass and are just barely staying open. However, I'm thrilled to say that pulling those close to 12 hour days at school this week has paid off: All of my students 400 Henri Rousseau-inspired masterpieces are up and on display for our Open House! Whew! If you follow me here, you've seen my students progress. We've all learned about the artist and created a tiger-tastic work of art (side note: our school mascot is also a tiger and we have a Tiger Run coming up next month. So now the halls are decked out for that occasion as well!). I'll be sharing each of the projects here over the next coupla weeks so stay tuned! Today, I present to you the work of my fourth grade artists!
To conquer this Jungle-tastic Project, we used the following supplies:
* Model Magic by Crayola
* Sax Versa Temp paint
* Chalk pastels
* Oil pastels
* 9" X 12" painted construction paper
* 9" X 12" poster board to back the construction paper
This project began on the very first day of art when, after covering the rules and such, we set about making painted paper. This idea of painting paper on the very first day came from my good friend and art teacherin' genius Laura Lohmann.
My Monday and Tuesday classes painted a variety of green papers for our jungle-y projects (used mucho by my third graders for their project, details to come) while my Wednesday and Thursday kids painted orange papers. My fourth graders ended up using these as the background for their collages.
We painted, we scraped with texture combs, we tried out different paint application techniques.
We pulled prints which we thought was just about the coolest thing ever and that was it for our first day! On our second day of art, we learned more about the artist Henri Rousseau and studied his jungle paintings. I even created a Jungle Lounge in my art room for the occasion!
Complete with Clean Up Gong, of course. Over the next two art classes, the students were allowed access to a ton of books featuring photos of tigers and information about their habitats and eating habits. With that in mind, they were given about golf ball size of Model Magic to create their tiger. I did show them some simple basics but really encouraged them to experiment, look at the visuals and come up with a creation of their own.
The following art class, those were painted. I thought the students would spend about thirty minutes painting but they were so excited to do detailed work on their tigers that they ended up using the entire 60 minutes to paint!
They might have been a lil influenced by this guy hanging out in the Jungle Lounge.
The kids have been spending the first 5-7 minutes of each class in the lounge sketching in their newly created sketchbooks! They love this area. I can't wait to create some more seating for them.
Creating the background took the kids another 60 minutes. They were allowed to pick any of the textured and painted papers they created on that first day to serve as their background. Then they could use either all warm or all cool colored chalk for their sky. Once the sky was complete, the kids could create the land portion of their work with any colors they liked.
We talked a lot about the habitats of tigers and again studied the visuals. The kids created lakes, rivers, jungles, mountain ranges, you get the idea. I was so impressed with their diverse ideas.
I mean, check out this: I was informed by the artist that her tiger was jumping from a rock to the top of a tree. This is her ariel view.
Once the chalk portion was complete, the kids were allowed to add more plants with oil pastels. They also used some remnants of the painted paper to create plants, trees, suns or moons and whatever else they could dream up.
Once both the background and the tiger were complete, the kids brought their tigers to me and told me where to hot glue them to the work. I also hot glued their work to a pieces of poster board as the construction paper was not strong enough to support the weight of their tiger. It was a little bit of added work on my part but I didn't mind. We were just so happy with the end result!
Have y'all used Model Magic before? I'd love to hear about your projects, I'm always looking to steal, er, borrow new ideas!
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