Dream Catchers

Another wonderful afternoon with After School Art students! I found this creative Dream Catcher tutorial at That Artist Woman.

Uncovering Mona Lisa

My fifth graders were learning about portrait-style paintings during the Reniassance. What better portrait than Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa! A classic...with a twist. I gave each student a line drawing of Mona Lisa. They had to flip the portrait upside down so that her face was at the bottom of the page (this helps the students focus less on trying to get it to look exactly like a face and focus more on lines and shapes), and cover it with a piece of black construction paper, leaving only the bottom inch showing. On a 12"x18" piece of white paper they drew what they could see. When they finished drawing that inch, they would raise the paper inch by inch until they had drawn the whole portrait. Students finished off their drawings by using colored pencils to give each Mona Lisa a different look. I had some extra wallpaper scraps so we used those for the backgrounds...I thought it made them look a little more Renaissance-like. They were quite proud of their results, as was I!

Big Mouthed Fish

Gone Fishin' with after-school artists...

Mother's Day Handprint Daffodils

I was trying to figure out a Mother's Day project for my younger elementary students when I stumbled across this daffodil online. I thought hand prints would be a great keepsake for moms! I had the students write a letter and we pasted that onto the back of the daffodil.

Mother's Day Watercolor Flowers

I wasn't planning on having my 6th graders do a project for Mother's Day, but we had some extra time. I set out all of my flowers and vases and they went to work. These beat any Hallmark card!

Kindergarten Mother's Day Fingerprint Flowers

Easter Egg Mosaics

For Easter this year, I drew an egg template for the students. We talked about mosaics and they got to work right away to create these materpieces! What a great way to get rid of extra paper scraps!