Christmas ornaments 2013

With the Holiday Home Tour (sebastopolholidayhometour.com) taking up a huge chunck of my time, its always fun to have the kids do some ornaments that we decorate school with and then they take them home.  In 2013 I did several:

Angels made from popsicle sticks and music note wings, which became an instant classic.

Wreaths that act as photo frames, made from yarn and pipe cleaners wrapped around a drapery ring.

Handprint reindeer. There are so many great holiday crafts made from handprints!

Owl collage

 A favorite of mine during the Fall are owls, which also seem to be popular these days.  They seem kinda autumnal, cute and aren't they supposed to represent knowledge?

This owl, which I did with my K-4th graders, used some collage elements. I first copied some sheet music (a song about birds) onto two different earthy colored papers, and then collected some newspapers and scrap paper.

The kids were told to cut a heart out of the music paper and that forms the body. You fold down the point to form a beak and up the round parts to form wings.  Then tear the newspaper into little bits for belly feathers.

Its amazing how much personality you get from the kids!

Week 16: Picasso Musicians

I try to introduce several famous artists to the kids and I have already used Van Gogh as an inspiration and will use Eric Carle (of kid's book fame) and George O'Keefe later this spring. This week I used Picasso as inspiration. Namely his "Three Musicians" painting which is a great Abstract but also fun theme for the kids.

Instead of paint I had the kids use scraps of colored paper, which we have a special box for in the art closet.  No full sheets of construction paper were harmed in this lesson, which is great because sometimes the kids want one tiny piece of yellow and grab a whole sheet.  Plus having the odd scraps made them think a bit more "out of the box."  Ironically the more you think about trying to make a person  out of the scraps, the harder it is. When doing the sample, I found it worked to just wing it for best results. Also, the younger kids had an easier time since they were less goal-oriented and perfectionists, compared to the older kids.

As a finishing touch, I has some leftover shiny wrapping paper and some very nice ribbon with music notes that helped add a festive whimsical note to the work.