Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Flowers

These Chalk Pastel Batik Flowers are easy and fun!

Every student can feel successful in their final product.

I did this project with my 3rd and 4th grade students. We started by looking at real and fake flowers, both work fine. Each student created their own viewfinder (cut a small rectangle 1/2" x 1" out of the center of a sheet of printer paper). The students then looked through the viewfinder holding it at arm's length away. This helped them to zoom in on small areas of the flowers like Georgia O'Keeffe did in her paintings. I told the students when you look through the viewfinder what you see is what you should draw on your paper. If you can not see it through the viewfinder you should not draw it. If the student still drew too much of the flower I made them choose an area and draw a rectangle around it. Then I had then enlarge that area to become their final abstract flower.

After getting the final image I had them transfer their drawing to a large black piece of paper.

The next step is to trace all of the pencil lines with a bottle of glue. It is important to keep the tip of the glue bottle on the paper and pull the glue bottle away from your line of glue keeping a nice steady flow of glue.

The next class when the glue has dried the students added color with the chalk pastels. The glue line acts as a barrier creating a batik look!

Underwater Batik

Third and Fourth Grade

This project is so simple and has great results. All you have to do is take a black piece of paper draw an underwater scene in pencil. Trace over your lines with a glue bottle. Make sure your tip stays on the paper and you pull not push the glue. Let it dry and then use chalk pastels to color it in and get vibrant colors. 

Plaster Masks

Fourth Grade

These masks focus mostly on design. The students created the masks using plaster gauze strips dipped into water and then put into a plastic mask mold. Since we are an international school the mask mold have a variety of ethnicities to choose from. After the mask dried and were removed from the molds the students applied tissue paper deigns to the masks with a little watered down glue. They also applied a layer of glue to the top to seal it and make it shiny.

10th Anniversary Mural

4th Grade

The fourth grade students worked hard to brainstorm, draw, design, select, redraw, and paint this beautiful mural. On the left it shows our school buildings with students sharing in an international feast of food to show celebration. The Phoniex in the sky is for our mascot. On the right is the Shanghai skyline with people from around the world and flags of the world. In the center is the cross and a Blessed sign for our theme word this year. The background swirls around like a Van Gogh sky to create movement.

The kids had a lot of fun with this even though it was a lot of hard work and took a long time they were happy with the finished result. We have no walls that we can paint so we just used foam core and acrylic paint.

Plaid Teddy Bears

First Grade

These adorable bears are a great lesson for line. 

First the students created Plaid paper with large horizontal and vertical lines made from tempera paint and sponge brushes. Then we let them dry. The next day we added horizontal and vertical lines with markers using a ruler. I had stencils for the shape of the teddy bear for the students to trace. Each students drew a picture of their own bed at home and painted it with watercolors. They then glued their plaid teddy bear onto the bed. We added buttons for eyes. 

Print of Flower

Fourth Grade

This is a great printmaking project that makes the kids feel like real professionals. 

The students started by drawing a vase of flowers from observation. They then traced their drawing onto a foam printing board pressing firmly. They took the paper off and traced again. The final step was to roll the ink onto the foam board with a brayer and then apply it to a clear transparency film. When the film was dry I added a piece of construction paper to the back with a small square of double sided tape in each corner.

Monsters in Shanghai

4th Grade

We were working with the idea of Proportion. Monsters are something that we think of as large compared to a city. So we created Monsters in Shanghai! We practiced drawing monsters in our sketchbook with group activities. We folded our paper into thirds and passed them clockwise around the room with the next person adding a section of the monster. This got the kids minds thinking about all different kinds of monsters and not just the ones in their head already. They loved this activity. We got many of laughs.

These are made out of Air Dry Clay and painted with Acrylic paint. Goggle eyes are added for effect. For the background they worked in groups to draw the Shanghai skyline onto black paper and then colored it in with construction paper crayons.