Clay Fun in Elementary

Posted on June 20, 2010 by artlessonsforkids

I was finally able to teach some fun clay lessons with all my students. There was a whole lot of pinching, rolling, punching, and coiling as each grade level explored and made gorgeous creations out of clay. I found an … Continue reading →

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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Recycled Paper Weaving in Grade Two

Posted on March 2, 2010 by artlessonsforkids

What happens when the copy lady in your school accidently makes too many copies? You recycle the paper into wonderful paper weaving creations of course! I saw this idea in an Arts and Activities magazine many years ago and thought it would be a perfect lesson to try with my second graders. As I have mentioned before, I pretty much save EVERYTHING! You never know what wonderful art project could be in store with your recycled items.

1. Find some old cardboard and cut them up into 9×12 pieces for each student. Get all your recycled paper (it could be colored paper too!) and give 8-10 pieces to each student.

2. Have each student twist each piece of paper until they have 8-10 ‘logs‘. Make sure they start twisting from the longer side of the paper so the logs will be long.

3. Have the students glue down the ends of their twisted paper onto the cardboard. These should be glued in a VERTICAL manner as they will be the warp. Use white glue and have the students count to 20 on each end to make sure it sticks down.

4. Put your kiddos into small groups and give each group a different color as you will be rotating the paint throughout the lesson. They should begin by painting the cardboard base and under the paper logs. Switch the colors around between groups and let the kids paint each log with lines, stripes, dots, etc. They will come up with creative ways to paint. Just make sure they don’t paint the bottom of the logs as these will STICK to the cardboard and you don’t want this to happen.

Next lesson, give out the rest of the log pieces and explain they need to go under, over and weave their paper. Some logs will come loose and this is ok. Have the kids finish weaving and then glue the end back down. Give out some more paint and let the kids finish their creations. Try this lesson with Grade ones and even grade three. They could even weave in other recycled material such as thick yarn, corrugated pieces of paper, etc.