Art at Lowell

This project can be done with any grade level. I did it with my preschool class this week so that’s where the example pictures are from. I did it in Kindergarten a couple of years ago, but it translates to upper elementary as well.

Supplies Needed:

• “Owl Moon” by Jane Yolen, or another wintry book, or no book at all. There is a copy of “Owl Moon” in room 100.
• Dark or Light Blue construction paper
• Black Oil Pastels
• White Tempera Cakes
• Paintbrushes
• Paint cups
• Glue or glue stick
• Large white paper to mount artwork to and capture the story.
• Black Sharpies for writing the story.
• For non-writers – a notebook/paper and pencil for each volunteer

Ideas for lessons:

• shadow and light
• silhouette
• resist
• illustration
• Genre art
• technique – drawing trees

I start this project by reading the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen, illustrated by John Schoenherr. It is a book about a young child who goes to look for owls with his/her Pa after bedtime. The book is beautifully illustrated and full of simile and metaphor which could be a nice focus for older children.

Next I ask the children to be inspired by the story and draw their own shadowy winter scene. If they were allowed to be outside in the snow with the moon shining down, what would they choose to do? Have them draw their shadowy, silhouette scene with the idea that they will share a brief story in the next steps. Perhaps give an example on the overhead of how to draw trees:

Next have the children use the white tempera to create their snow layer. **White tempera cakes work great for this. Make sure the children get a lot of paint on their brushes before painting. If there is too much water the paint tends to sink into the construction paper and disappear.

Next, have the kids glue their artwork to a larger piece of white paper. For neatness, you may have the kids draw pencils lines on the white paper to write their story on. You could do this ahead for younger grades as well. The next step is to capture the story of the picture. In the younger grades volunteers can ask each child to tell the story of their picture while they write it down in a notebook to be transcribed on the white mounting paper later (by the volunteers). In upper elementary the kids can write their own stories under or next to their artwork using black sharpies.

I just love seeing what the kids come up with. Note that you can skip reading the book and/or skip writing the kids’ stories and it is still a cool project.