Crayon Shaving Fall Trees

We are on Thanksgiving break right now and I feel like autumn is fleeting. I've always felt that the Friday after turkey day was the beginning for Christmas  and winter festivities. So here is my last post related to fall because next you will be seeing snowmen and snowflakes!

I did this project with my first graders. We first talked about which season we were in and the different attributes that went along with fall. Namely, colorful falling leaves.

I showed them how to create their trees with brown construction paper. After they were done creating the tree they brought me their picture so that I could add crayon pieces and iron the wax paper together. We had a nice orderly system going that worked really well.

After their paper was fused together, they added a black border and put a fall pattern on it with oil pastels. 

I have to say that I didn't intend for them to be sun-catchers. I was just simply holding them up to look at and realized how great and vivid  they looked with the light shining through.

I decided to display them in the windows above the front door. This is a heavily trafficked area where I knew the student's work would stand out. 

This was a great one day project that included science in the art making. The students really enjoyed it and thought it was so cool how the crayons melted. I am excited to do this project again next year.

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Secondary Pumpkin Patches

Happy Halloween all! Here is an example of the pumpkin patch pictures that I made with kindergarten. 

I wanted to review color mixing with my kinders and do something fall related. I thought it would be nice to make pumpkins at night. I gave each table a tray prefilled with two primary colors and gave them a chance to swirl and mix. I love how excited they always get when they make a new color. We mixed and painted the pumpkins first. I took up the orange trays and gave them new trays to mix up green, and then let them mix purple for the night sky. During the next class meeting they drew in lines with black crayon. Then I gave them brown, green and yellow paper to glue in shapes for the stems, leaves, and stars. The paper was pre-painted and came from my scrap bins. They gave a really nice texture to the paintings.

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