Friday, April 17, 2009
Straw-blown Trees, 4th Grade
I found this gorgeous idea through ThatArtistWoman, and thought my 4th graders would enjoy it. So, I picked a class, and we rolled with it ;) We used real watercolor paper (and I am limited on this). They were about 6x10 or so. Then, we taped them down to a board (we used our weaving boards). Then, the students did a wet-in-wet watercolor technique for the background. The next day we watered down some brown tempera, dropped some in the corner and used our straws to blowwwww out the tree branches. Of course, you have to continually drop more on. Some of the kids did have a very hard time with it. I had some light-headed and dizzy ones after all that blowing. Haha. They added with q-tips some little pink, red or green dots to make the trees look in bloom. Sorry for the terrible quality pictures.
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4 comments:
I did a rather large unit (it started as an exercise and was so loved that we kept at it for awhile longer) that I called "breath portraits." I used liquid watercolor and I introduced a few techniques (using different streams of breath to create different patterns), and my students & I discovered a few more together. To address that dizziness, I began the listen with a simple breathing exercise to help show students that they had some control over how they felt...if they didn't pay attention to their bodies, they would end up feeling off (headachy, dizzy, thirsty, etc). It was amazing to watch them at such deep work! I don't have a blog, but can direct you to some pics at my flickr if you'd like. Keep up the fab work!
I do this project in my class and i have found that the coffee stir straws (only available at office supply stores in my area) prevent any light headed-ness. i think because it is impossible for them to blow hard through them. You can also get skinnier tree branches with india ink beecause it takes longer to dry and will roll farther. expo board cleaner gets india ink out. i love your blog!
I did a rather large unit that I called "breath portraits." I used liquid watercolor and I introduced a few techniques (using different streams of breath to create different patterns), and my students & I discovered a few more together.
I think that kids can do interesting paint with that kind of method. Watercolor even though it can turn in a mess. I really like its style the colors that you can get.
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