Papier Mâché Birds-well worth it!

Golden Eagle and Woodpecker

This is it.....the best project with my Grade 3s by far. The kids completely fell in love with these papier mâché birds (that they got to know quite well over the 4 weeks we spent on them!).

First, thank you many times over to Julie at Art for Small Hands who created and posted this lesson. The project was quite involved, but she broke it down into easy, manageable steps.

My Grade 3 theme is Canadian art and artists, so I had each student choose to represent one bird that lives in Canada. I had them search through bird books to find one, and then they had to sketch a picture of it in their sketchbooks, colour it with pencil crayons, and make sure to label the type of bird it was as well.  Students went back to their sketches several times; when forming the bird's body shape, and when choosing paint colours.

Crow and Robin

Belted Kingfisher, Woodpecker, and Crow

Swallow

Several classes later, after building the body, layering with papier mâché, adding wire legs and a beak, acrylic painting, and varnishing (non-toxic), the birds were done! A long project, but well worth the time and effort.

Colourful Shape Stamping

Shape stamping got very messy and super creative with Grade 1s. I  found a great lesson at laughpaintcreate that focused on letting students explore the different possibilites of mark making on paper (with foam shapes, forks, lids, etc.). 



First, students cut and placed sticky foam shapes onto cardboard squares. (Obviously, this one has already been used as a stamp.)



more stamps...



Then they painted their shapes with liquid tempera, stamped them several times onto the paper, and added more marks with forks and lids.

  

Awesome colour and sense of movement!



More structured and controlled.