Mask making

One of my favorite books to read when I was a classroom teacher was Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire by Rafe Esquith. This inner city elementary teacher had some of the greatest (and funniest) lessons. The mask making comes straight out of his book. 

What you need: 

-Plaster Cloth cut in 1in x 4in you can get at any craft store or at Dick Blick

-Bowl of warm water

-Towel & paper towel

-Vasaline 

-Straws 

First off, put vasaline on eyebrows and eyelashes to prevent them from being ripped off. 

Then, have a kid lay flat in a table and put straws in their nose. Dipping one strip at a time in the warm water, ringing it out a hit and placing them on the kid's face, it is best to have an assistant that will wipe away excess water that can drip down into ears. Cover the face in several layers of strips. 

I've found it best to smooth out the entire mask with your fingers. This will make painting easier later on. 

These will take about 15-20 to dry.

Once they are dry, have the kid wiggle their face a bit and pull the mask off. They won't be completely dry for several more hours so have a newspaper wadded up to set it on. 

After a day or so have the kids paint the mask. 

And after we snapped this, the cheesy lines started rolling like...

"I forgot to smile!"

"Wait, I think I may have blinked!"

Toucans

I'll be the first to admit, one of my pet peeves is a cookie cutter lesson, meaning that everyone's art turns out looking exactly the same. 

Not a fan. 

You might as well pass out coloring sheets. 

Rant over. 

This lesson is a perfect example of non-cookie-cutterness (I may have just created a new word) For the third day of our Around the World class, Deep Space Sparkle came through once again! 

After several practice sketches with different toucan placement, they picked out their favorite and painted their bird's outline. Baby wipes (which are abundant in my house with two in diapers) are really handy for this part just in case a beak needed an alteration. As long as the paint is still wet it will wipe away pretty easily. 

Working on the background first.

Then giving their toucans some splashes of color and lastly reoutlining in black paint.

Toucans that are as individual as they are! 

Scrolls

Day two of our Around the World class was a bit of a juggling act. With 3 centers, two of which would be projects that wouldn't be finished until next week. Here is the project that we could and did finish. I got the idea from the book Map Art Lab.

Scrolls of our lives 

We used:

Colored paper

Bleach

Qtips

Twine

Driftwood

Paint marker

Beads

Paper to list 10 life events and doodle pictures beside.

First the kids decorated a piece of drift wood using paint markers.

Then, they listed out 10 things that happened in their life on a sheet of paper and drew a picture beside as many as they could as a symbol for that event. For example if they moved they drew a house, if they became an aunt they drew a baby, if they went on vacation they drew something they did on vacation, if they had to go to the hospital because they stuck a bean up their nose....they drew a bean and a nose....which was actually one of the kids life events!

Next, using a qtip dipped in bleach they drew out their symbols in chronological order on the colored paper. I used a big sheet of construction paper from Hobby Lobby which I cut into 4in x 2ft strips before hand but you could just do regular construction paper cut in half.

They punched two holes in the top and one in the bottom of their paper. Also, an arm lengths piece of twine was used to attached the top to the stick and a forearms length of twine for the bottom.  Beads were tied on to the ends of the twine with knots to keep them in place.

And here are the stories of their lives all unrolled :)

Chinese Dragons

The second class for the summer is called Around the World and is a sampling of art from across the globe.

I had for months planned on doing a totally different oriental project but something kept drawing (ha! No pun intended) me towards dragons, I found this lesson off Deep Space Sparkle, tweaked it a bit, used different medium and the more difficult example and was ASTONISHED with the results!!

When the kids arrived, we all shared what we knew about dragons. Then, we compared our knowledge of dragon physique to Chinese dragons and noticed quite a difference.

To make our dragons, we did two practice runs. I gave each kid a 1ftx2ft skinny piece of paper (nothing fancy just paper cut in half from my large sketch pad I use for live examples.) With oil pastel we practiced our dragons starting with the head and working our way down the body, lastly adding details like spikes & scales.  

The second practice was with ink, more for them just to get the feel of the fluidity before they used it on the canvas.

When they felt comfortable with the ink they picked up their canvases.

Next, the easels went up as well as three paint colors of their choice.

Last, reoutlining to really make their colors pop and then to draw the Chinese symbol for dragon which I had printed out for them to look at. I let them use my paint pens for this part. 

And here they are! 

A surprising little thing I learned during this lesson is that if you have a left handed kid, have them start their dragon head on the right side rather than the left. They'll be dragging the brush across their body which is easier for them and they're less likely to smudge anything because their hand won't rub up against any fresh ink or paint!