Warm Color Tree Silhouettes - 3D Grade

We are in a creative firestorm this year! Third grade just finished up creating their Warm Color Tree Silhouettes and they are stunning in all their warm color glory!

It took us about three 30 minute classes to create them. Some finished in two and some needed the extra third to complete their piece due to absence and working paces...

We started by sketching out a simple tree with black paint. I demonstrated how to use their paint brush to do a quick, simple sketch of their tree and then go back and paint in the lines, spaces neatly. This saved a lot of valuable time not sketching in pencil first and the kids did just fine doing their initial sketch in dry brush.  This took one 30 minute class...

During the second class the kids started by creating a visually textured collage of leaves in the backgrounds of their piece using leaf rubbing plates and only Warm Colors.  Rubbing plates are super popular with my students from Kindergarten all the way up to my Fifth grades! In Kindergarten they think its magical how the patterns/pictures appear on their paper! Even as they get older and understand why the images appear the magic of the rubbing plates still appeal to them! 

The rubbings only took a few minutes to complete so when the kids were ready they started painting over the background with Warm color watercolors.  This was a great opportunity to discuss the concept of contrast in colors. We have been talking about contrast since our first project this school year so when they started painting some of the kids noticed that some of the rubbings were harder to see than others. "Why do think that's happening?", I asked. ( higher order questioning people! I've taken several workshops on higher order thinking/questioning recently...) I had the students offer their thoughts and they all began to conclude that it was because yellow watercolor over yellow crayon had no contrast and didn't show up as well as a red crayon rubbing would with a yellow watercolor over it, yay for contrast! They are making connections!  (Now to just get some of this to happen during one of my observations, lol... )

Most of the kids finished painting during the second class but several in each class needed some more time to catch up with their classmates so we used a third class as an "Art Ketchup" day.  I had several activities prepped for the kids to do if they wanted instead of going to the activity center and let the finished choose.  

 My Thursday Third grades are a little ahead of the Tuesday Thirds so tomorrow I am planning a collaborative circle painting activity for them that coordinates with our Peace week that is happening this week.  The kids know I have something special planned and are eager to find out what it is...

I can't wait to display these tomorrow! They are going to look beautiful together in a group!

I am enjoying my new IPhone 5 ( yeah, I know, I'm slow to keep up with technology... the Verizon dude thought I was nuts when I said I didn't want to wait a couple of days for the 6 ,but hey, that's me, I move to my own beat and it's usually not that of the popular crowd... ) I love how easy it is to take pictures with and they are nice pictures ( to me anyway ) most of blog pics since September have been from my IPhone. I got another new app ( new to me anyway ) last night,  it's called, Color Cap.  I wanted something that I could use to write words on my photos to make some cool visuals for my room.  I made the " Create" one last night from a pic of a watercolor set I had on my phone.  Some of you out there are really tech savvy so I know that it may not be too impressive to you, but for the technologically challenged "moi" ( me ) it's pretty cool! My son and daughter ( 21 and 15 ) are all "check out Mom" using technology and social networking! I'm slow getting there but I'm catching up!  I also put a couple of Flipgrams that I made recently on my Instagram page. You can access it from the link on the top right of my blog page.

 Hope your weather and week are going well! It's blustery, cold and rainy here today!  Came home early today because of a small vertigo spell but it's better now... the room no longer spins out of control when I move my head!  ( like my head isn't always spinning, lol...)

Mrs."C"  :)