The school was giving away some potted plants and I was more than happy to give them a home in my classroom. I have big windows with plenty of light and plants are a great subject for drawing, observations etc. If any of your students finish their work early you can always send them off to get a plant and draw it!

My grade two students were learning about plants in science so this was a great opportunity to integrate art with their science curriculum. I placed different pots along the tables and gave out 12×18 sized paper for everyone. The object of the lesson was to observe the plant, make an outline drawing and ‘color‘ in the still life drawing with colored tape. They started by drawing the pot. If you do this lesson, make sure the kids ‘sketch‘ their drawings so if they need to erase dark something, dark pencil lines aren’t left behind!

Once they were happy with their outline which had to include the pot, the pot’s rim and the plants and flowers they were ready to color in with the tape. Everyone chose a color for their pot and stuck and overlapped pieces of tape to cover the pot area. Next they chose another color for the rim and finally other tape colors for the leaves and flowers. Make sure your students use different colored tape for the different areas such as the base of the pot, the rim, the flowers, buds, leaves, details on the leaves etc. Encourage your students to stick down the tape and to tear off pieces as well as cut them with scissors.

When they were finished, they added a detail to the face of the pot such as a heart, sun etc and with colored pencils lightly drew a background and table for their potted plant. Make sure it is lightly drawn so the pot remains the focus.

I loved how they turned out, don’t you? If you want to see more pictures then click here to see the slide show I created for this lesson.

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