Halloween pumpkins

For the younger kids, I did a Halloween project that got great results a few years back: Positive / negative pumpkins with orange and black paper.

The key is having the kids learn that they can just draw half the jack-o-lantern on one piece and cut it out and then reverse it onto the other paper.

Quite a concept for the Kinders!  But they had much more fun results than I imagined. Very cool stuff!

The Kindergarteners:

The 1st-4th graders

Week 6: Halloween Black Cats

To celebrate Halloween without the pumpkins, ghosts and skeletons, I came across the idea to draw a black cat with bright glowing eyes. The kids had really enjoyed doing a directed drawing last year for the the Year of the Tiger, and this became a similar project.

I had them use black paper, white crayons and bright oil pastel. I wanted them to just color the eyes and amybe the background but leave the cat face black paper.

Week 8: Pumpkin reflections

This week our little school of 50 kids had 18+ kids out with the flu (swine or other white meat, not sure?)  Our family of 5 had 4 of us down, but I was well enough to do art with the 3rd and 4th graders. My class of 21 had 12 in it.  I had intended to do something Halloween-y with black paper and colored pastels or pencils, but the idea lacked punch so I borrowed this great idea from the  Art Projects from Kids blog. Thanks!

Its a pretty simple but great idea. You take a half sheet of black paper and draw, then cutout, a half pumpkin. You then take the pieces you have made and flip/mirror them over. If you glue these onto a colored piece you get a great positive/negative lesson. To embellish it, I still had the kids use yellow or white or orange colored pencil to draw spider webs, cats, bats, moons etc.

For the most part, they really understood the concept, with just a bit of help. Some of the kids "altered" the idea and used more paper and made a black and white side to put on a colored sheet, and that looked cool as well. Great job and a real nice Halloween decoration. I even suggested to the kids that they might want to take this idea home and try it for a Christmas Tree or silly face.  I could see the lightbulbs in some of the kid's heads!  This started out to be a makeshift concept, but it turned out to be one of the best.

I often feel like the kids lift me up when I'm feeling a bit down or uninspired. Thanks kids!

2008 Fall projects

Here are some of the projects I did last fall with the K-2nd graders:

This was our first project. I had the kids trace hands onto construction paper and then crumpled up butcher paper for the tree branch. It was simple but a good "get to know you" project.

--------------------------------------------------------------

To tie in with harvest and natural themes: This was natural vegetable dyes from veggies and fruits that we blended and added water. It got kinda messy, but the kids thought it was cool. We did experimental painting on paper. The thrust of the project was the technique and not the final result.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I had the kids bring in fall leaves, and other natural things and we made collages. A bit too much glue gun and elmers misshaps for the younger kids though;-)

--------------------------------------------------------------

We used apples to print the frames and did a painting of an apple tree for the center. This was my sample. I guess I was too busy or had too much paint on my hands to snap the kid's work!

--------------------------------------------------------------

A kid-favorite. Plain old wooden spoons from the craft store jazzed up with lots of odds and ends to make scare crows. This was pretty glue-gun intenzive, but fun.