Camouflaged Lizards in Grade Three

Posted on May 13, 2010 by artlessonsforkids

My students had a blast creating these fun and colorful camouflaged lizards. We spent some time researching lizards on internet and looking at the patterns and colors. We then discussed a little about camouflage and the kids were anxious to get into the project and create their own cool lizard.

The first part was to practice drawing real lizards. They printed copies of their favorite lizards and after some guided drawing lessons, they happily went off to draw their own.

Next step was to think of a place where a lizard would not normally be found — after all this is an art class and the sky is the limit when it comes to imagination! This is a great time to introduce abstract art and look at some great works of Salvador Dali to get the kids inspired. Umbrellas, i pods, boots, etc were all drawn on large 18×12 paper and colored in.

The final step was to draw the lizards on thicker paper such as bulletin board paper. Once the lizards were drawn, they had to be colored in to mimic part of the object they drew previously so their lizard would camouflage. The lizards were cut out, bent along the middle and the feet folded so they would ‘stand’ on their object after being glued.

Don’t these look so much fun?

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Insect Dioramas in Grade One

Posted on April 5, 2010 by artlessonsforkids

Dioramas are so much fun to make with kids and it’s also a great way to recycle those old shoeboxes too! Grade ones are learning about insects in science so we have been doing many insect related art projects which I will post very soon.

Tell your students to bring an old shoebox from home and if they don’t have one they can easily visit a shoe store and explain to one of the assistants or managers they need an empty shoe box for an art project. They will be more than happy to give some boxes away.

Explain what a diorama is and tell your students thay will create a background for their insect home on each inside side of the box. The background needs to be colorful. The theme here was insects but you can adapt this project to absolutely anything!

Outlining the main background

Next step is to make the standing up insects and extras do the diorama comes to life. This is the exciting part that kids love. Remind the students that after they draw their insect and depending where they will glue it in their box, to leave some white space left, right, above or below the picture. When they cut it out this extra part will be bent and glued in the box. The kids will get the hang of this quickly.

These turned out lovely don’t you think? I love all the details. 🙂

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Matisse Inspired Collages in Grade Three

Posted on March 14, 2010 by artlessonsforkids

Matisse is one of my favorite artists because I love the simplicity of his collages and kids can relate so much to his art in any grade level. We went online to find information about Henri Matisse and his artwork. The kids immediately fell in love with the vibrant colors in his collages and wanted to get to a pair of scisssors as fast as they could.

I set out colored paper around the classroom, glue bottles and scissors and let the kids go for it. I reminded them for this project they could either create panels for their backgrounds and fill them with organic shapes or simply do a collage filled with organic shapes. No pencils were allowed and they had to freely cut away. They also needed to plan their shapes and arrange them before glueing anything down.

They had such a great time and the result was colorful and beautiful. What do you think?

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