2nd Grade Desert Landscapes

As I'm on my way back from New Mexico I felt it only appropriate to share this lesson.  I've just spent the last five days in 90 degrees and sunshine, needless to say I'm SO READY for summer.  If I could grow a cactus in my yard in Nebraska it would already be done.  My sophomore year of high school my job in biology was to water the cactus.  I KNOW, I KNOW easy job right...give it a little sprinkle of water every month or so and done.  Yeah...about that I forgot about it the entire year and needless to say it's end came much shorter than anticipated.

Enough about my glory days of high school and more about the rockstar work of these 2nd graders!  The concept here was space, here is last years lesson where we explored foreground, middleground, and background.  A little magic with some salt and watercolors really sold 2nd graders on this lesson.  

Well I've still got a few days left of Spring Break and I'm going to enjoy every second of it. But first please do enjoy my favorite cacti from my New Mexico vacay.

And to end things on a good note please enjoy this photo for the next several seconds. Does anyone have a thigh master I can borrow? 

Kindergarten Winter Landscapes

Kindergarteners made these lovely winter landscapes. To start we drew a line from one side of the paper to the other. We then added the three circles for the snowman.  Students then got a mixture of silver paint with Crayola "Texture It" mixing medium to paint the snowy ground and the snowman.  

Students made trees using a small piece of cardboard. Students watched as I made a straight line from the ground up with black paint and added just a few black branches. Students then made their black branches reemphasizing to stamp the cardboard not slide it. I then added green paint to the paint tray and kindergarteners stamped on more branches. White paint was added to the tray  and students stamped a few white lines to make the trees look "snowy."  Cardboard was discarded and kindergarteners received a q-tip using it first to make the white snow on the background. They used the other end to create the details on the snowman. Lastly, using a white oil pastel students outlined their snowmen and added some orange for the nose. We got this all done in one class!

                                           I love how abstracted some of the trees look. 

Kindergarten Secondary Color Pumpkin Landscape

With all the painted paper kindergarteners made students made a fall inspired piece.  Using the secondary color painted paper students practiced our cutting and gluing skills as well as making shapes.  The main shape we focused on was the pumpkin shape using an oval to make the form.  Students could add detail to their pumpkins with black sharpie.

Teacher Example:

Student Examples:

This last one was made by an ELL student, notice the sleeping pumpkin.