"Winter Birch Trees" by 8th grade

      I found this lesson on Deep Space Sparkle blog a few years ago, and have been doing it with my 8th grade students ever since. Since then, I have seen many blogs do posts on the same project and I'm always interested in seeing how they do it. Often, teachers make small changes as they go and the project comes out a little different for each class.
     For example, this year, instead of leaving the snow area on their paper pure white, my students added a wash of the lightest purple watercolor we could make. We combined water with a few drops of purple liquid water color paint to achieve the super light color. I love the way it changed the overall look of the artwork. I did keep the tissue paper sky in the background, but one of my students missed class the week before, so I gave him some materials and said, "See what you can do!" His came out great!! You will be able to tell his apart from the others. It is the only one with a painted, solid blue sky. It makes me think I might need to create a spin-off lesson for another grade.
Here are some of the finished ones...

"Close, Closer, Closest Snowmen" by Grade 7

This is a cool perspective lesson that I have been doing for a few years. I remember getting the idea a few years ago somewhere, but I can't remember where, so I apologize if it was your idea and I don't give you credit. Feel free to comment and let me know! Although I only have 24 followers (sad face) so I somehow doubt the original lesson planner will stumble across my post. If you are reading this and are not a follower of my blog, please join! I'd love to feel that my students' audience is growing.

Anyway, the object of this lesson was for my students to draw the SAME snowman three times as if they were digitally zooming in on a picture. They needed to take the whole picture into consideration, and also add more details and texture as they got closer to their snowman. Many of them found it was not as easy as it sounds! Some of them were quite successful.

"Collage Snowmen" by Third Grade

How beautiful are these snowmen? I absolutely love all the bright colors. They put down a layer of tissue paper and painted a white snowman on it. After it dried, they painted all the details onto their snowmen. I love how you can see a little bit of the tissue paper color through the white paint.

Here are some finished pieces of artwork...

"Polar Bears Under the Northern Lights" by Grade 5

I love these! Big thanks to Mary and her Marymaking art blog. Here is a link to her lesson that inspired me,  http://marymaking.blogspot.com/2011/12/polar-bears-with-northern-lights.html.

The fifth grade worked so hard on these and it was wonderful to see them so excited about a project. It took 1.5 art classes to complete. They are now hanging in the hallway just past the office ready for viewing. Come check them out!

Here are some you can check out right now...

"Owls in the Moonlight" by fourth grade

I love these owl paintings. The students used paintbrushes, cardboard pieces, their thumbs, and the backs of their paintbrushes to create these moonlit paintings. The owl details were added on with sharpie markers. Last year's class did them on light blue paper with a big yellow moon, but I thought it looked too much like day. So, this year we switched to purple paper and added a moon with a cool blue glow around them. I think they represent nighttime better now. I got the idea from http://kidsartists.blogspot.com/2010/12/owls-in-night.html. It's a great art blog!

Some finished pieces...