In the Art Room: Second Grade Collage Landscapes Inspired by Chilean Arpilleras

Hey, guys! I'm excited to share with y'all the finished product of many an art class: Second Grade's Landscape Collages!

Here's some things we learned along the way (with more detail in a hot minute):

* How to create textured papers. I borrowed heavily from my buddy Laura's blog Painted Paper because Laura is my art teacher super hero. Suriously. Her students work is amazin'. 

* How to create a landscape with a fore-, middle- and background. 

* How to create an origami house. Some kids got really into this, creating multiple houses for their landscape.

* How to embellish with puffy paint...selectively. Oh, lawd, y'all. You've heard of the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, right? Well, If You Give a Second Grader Puffy Paint was not about to be the sequel in my art room. I was the Puffy Paint Nazi. One false move and it was NO PUFFY PAINT FOR YOU!

* How to create a whip-stitched boarder. So I thought this would be totes elementary for these guys. Turns out kids don't know how to sew anymore and this was ROCKET SCIENCE. Note to self: Have more stitched projects...for the sub to do (haha, I kid. Kinda.)

Now that you know the gist, lemme back up a lil bit and give you the full story. The lessons started with an intro to Mexico and Latin America. You can find my prezi (remember my prezi addiction?) here. 

After that prezi and a quick chat, we spent our first 30 minutes (my first and second grade have 30 minutes of art, twice every six days) creating textured paper with a sponge and tan paint. We chatted about the texture of the Andes mountains in Chile and used that as our inspiration. 

The following 30 minutes were spent learning more painting techniques. We learned how to use cardboard to print flowers or plants, use a texture comb to create textured papers (see the sun below) and how to create a plaid pattern with a dry brush technique. Yes, all that in 30. Sometimes I question my sanity.

The following class, we chatted about arpilleras. You can see my prezi on those lovelies here. After that, we began tearing our textured papers and gluing them to a 12" X 12" construction paper background of our choosing. The key to doing this without having gaps in the landscape is to have the kids begin with the background piece and proceed gluing pieces toward the foreground.  

The next art class, I had the kids immediately grab a piece of origami paper as they entered and meet me on the floor for a origami house demo on the document camera. Before I had a doc camera, I would have simply done an origami demo on a GIANT sheet of paper so they could see all of the steps. With the cam, we all worked together. If time allowed, the kids created more houses or used thin Sharpies to decorate their homes. Initials were written on the back and these wee ones were saved for the following art class.

The next day, I told the kids that they had four goals to reach BEFORE they entered Puffy Paint Town: glue houses to landscape keeping perspective in mind (or not), add clouds/stars/whateverness to the sky, create a sun or moon and add their name at the bottom. If all of these goals were met, they could begin to add puffy paint in dots only on their land. 

I actually have a couple of these beauties that I've found at the thrift store over the years. I love having the real thing to share with the kids instead of just a photo from the 'net. 

Many of the kids didn't reach their goals all in 30 minutes so they needed an extra day to puffy paint. The deal with puffy paint is that it has this habit of sneezing all over art work. So I had the kids use a piece of practice paper to practice dot making before doing it on their masterpiece. The deal with kids is that they get carried away on their practice paper (really? You needed to fill the whole paper with dots? Because now the bottle is empty, dude.) so I started to limit them to 3 practice dots. 

Next up was the stitching. Oh boy. I did go ahead and hole punch the sides of their artwork for them prior to art class. Hate me if you wanna but I just didn't want to spend an additional 30 minutes watching the kids struggle and possibly tear their work as they punched through (sometimes) 3 pieces of construction paper. Added bonus: I now have super big muscles in the right hand. Just what I've always wanted!

Once the stitching was complete, so was the masterpiece! I absolutely love how these beauties turned out and the kids are just as thrilled. I decided to hang them in the hall by paper clipping them together because it's my new fave way to display. 

Speaking of faves, collage landscapes are also my favorite means of teaching about landscapes. For more lessons, you can check out these Collaged Parisian Pictures, Egyptian Landscape Pieces,
and these Tube Castle Landscapes. What's your fave landscape lesson? I needs to know! Until next time, y'all, use that puffy paint the way your art teacher done showed ya!

Read more »