Gingerbread Prints

Here is a cute little printmaking lesson I did with my class this week.  The kids loved the process in creating these!  This is definitely a lesson I will do again! 

 

 

We used Styrofoam plates to create our prints.  Students cut off the edges of their plates so that they were left with a flat circle.  They then took a gingerbread man cookie cutter  and pressed it into their plates to create an imprint.  Because this did not make a deep enough impression they then used dull pencils to retrace the shape.  Other details were added.  Some used marker caps to create smaller circles for eyes or buttons.

 

Then, using a brayer and brown paint, students rolled paint onto their imprinted plates.  They were given large sheets of paper so that they could make many attempts to make a clean print.

 

When they were dry we cut out 2 gingerbread men for our Christmas cards for our parents.  Her is my sample:

 

We glued them onto folded brown construction paper and added some white dots around the edges.

 

 

I also gave them coloured sequins to glue onto their cards, if they wished.  Unfortunately I did not have time to take any photos as we finished these on the last day of school before our break!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunflowers

On Earth Day my Grade 1 students planted sunflower seeds.  The plants are now at varying stages of growth and the children excitedly check on their own plant each morning.  I thought the children would enjoy creating some bright sunflower artwork.

We created these sunflower paintings using the same cut sponges used in my

Christmas Poinsettias. 

Day One:  We made our petals by painting the sponges and then stamping them onto our papers.  We drew a small circle with pencil as a reference point and then worked our way around it.  We then used green paint to add a stem and sponged leaves onto the stem.

Day Two:  We used brown oil pastels to colour in the center circle of the sunflower.  We then used orange and green pencil crayons to add texture lines to the petals, stem and leaves.  The final step was to use blue pastel to colour in the background.

 The make our classroom very bright and cheery!

Snowflake Collage

We have been experimenting with different printmaking activities to create these snowflake collages.

We added a computer activity to go along with our art display.

To create these collages we first used bubble wrap to create the background "blizzard".  Students painted blue paint onto their bubble wrap then flipped it over and made a few prints all over their paper.  Then they painted white onto the bubble wrap which created a lighter tint of blue and printed that onto their papers.  They continued with the white paint until they were actually seeing white prints on their papers.

At another station kids used brayers to roll paint onto snowflake stamps.  Some of the stamps I easily made by glueing large foam stamps onto cardboard.  The other smaller snowflakes were ones I bought on sale at Michael's for about 75 cents each.

When everything was dry the students had to carefully cut out their snowflakes.  I asked them to leave a white boarder around each flake and not get the scizzors to cut the paint.

Here are some of their samples:

We also added a word processing component with our display. My kids worked on this during their computer block.  Here is the sign I posted in the middle of the display:

 

Sponge Print Poinsettias

Here is a great December art project to do with any primary class.  There are many versions of this project on Pinterest and art blogs.  Here are some of the final products done by my Grade One class.

This project does require a bit of prep work but it is absolutely worth it. 

Prep: You will need to buy a couple of packages of sponges and then cut them into petal shapes for the poinsettias (the sponges can be reused in the spring for other plant and flower art projects!).  I cut enough so that each child would have their own.  You do not have to worry about them looking 'perfect' as the kids will often use their entire hand to press the sponge to the paper and they create their own organic shape.

Directions:

1. Have the students draw 2 yellow dots on their paper.  I got them to put their left hand on the top left corner, point their thumb to the right, and draw the dot sitting on their thumb.  Then they put their right hand on the bottom right hand corner and drew the dot touching their thumb (not sticking out this time).  I did this to try to space the poinsettias far enough apart that they wouldn't overlap too much (a little is great) but not put them too far apart that too much of the flower is off the paper.

2. Students used a paintbrush to paint the red paint onto their sponge.  Using the yellow dots as a guide they pressed the sponge onto their papers so that each petal was radiating from the dot.  They continued all the way around the dot, and some were able to get 2 prints from one paint application. 

3. Then they did the same to the other dot.

4. When they were done they had to wash their own sponge and do their best squeeze as much water out as possible.  They then repeated the same printmaking process with dark green paint to add leaves around their poinsettias.  Then were then left to dry.

5. The next day we used a light green oil pastel to draw veins and texture onto the leaves and coloured around the poinsettia flowers.

6. The final touch was adding yellow or gold dots of glitter glue to the center of each flower.