Advent Calendars

It's time to start thinking about Advent Calendars.  I particularly like additive ones, where you add parts to a picture the closer you get to Christmas.

This idea came from "The Children's Year" by Stephanie Cooper, Christine Fynes-Clinton and Marye Rowling.  It is discussed as a transparency so I converted it to an art project.

You add a star each day until the large star for the 24th and add the Baby Jesus on the 25th.  A great project for the kids at my school as we are a Catholic school.

You can also use this method with other winter themes.  Here you add parts to this Snowman scene as the days progress.




I'll show you the details on the snowman at the end of this post.
















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- wc paper or heavy sketch
- disk tempera paint in purple, white, and blue
- shiny silver/gold paper, wrapping paper works well
- template if required, here is mine
- white paper
- pencil crayons, wax crayons, or pastels to add colour to Mary
- scissors
- glue
- glitter glue, little gems, optional
- white pencil crayon, sharpie, or white gel pen

PROCEDURE:

Tape down your paper to stop it from moving while painting.  Starting with pale purple in the center (white + purple) paint the paper in a circular motion.  Darken as you go to dark purple. (purple = blue).


Let dry.






Cut paper into a large oval.

Trace out or draw free hand Mary, baby Jesus, and the large star on white paper.


If you want you can use my template.

Add colour with paint, crayon, pastel.  Whatever medium you have on hand.

Embellish the large star with glitter, sequins, and gems if you wish.

Out of the gold shiny paper cut a large circle and glue on the center of your purple oval.

I used a recycled lid as my template.  This is the halo of light around Mary and the baby Jesus.

Cut out the pieces from the white paper.  Set baby Jesus and large star aside.

For Mary add glue to the back everywhere but near her hand.  You want to leave this free so you can slip baby Jesus in behind on the 25th.

Press into place.

Now you need 23 stars.  I used a punch but you could use the Cricut machine, cut them by hand, or even use sticky stars.

Now you need to number where everything will go.  It helps to lay it out.  If you don't want your students to see it finished you can add the numbers for them, once you've seen it once you can easily add the numbers.


Use white pencil crayon, gel pen or even sharpie.  They have nice silver and gold sharpies now.

Put the 23 stars, baby Jesus, and the large star in an envelope.  Each day in December glue a star into place.  On the 24th add the large star in anticipation of the birth of Jesus,  then on the 25th you can add him to Mary's arms.

You can have each child make one to take home and complete or you could do a large version for the bulletin board for the class to complete.

For the snowman you add parts to the picture as you go.

You start by painting the blue background.  Let that dry.

The first 2 days you add the snow.  I cut 2 snowbanks out of textured paper, (paper with white streamer glued to it).  You can add some glitter to make your snow sparkle.   For days 3 and 4 add the trees from painted paper.

Add the 3 snowballs for the snowman (days 5,6,7) and continue on.


Days 8, 9, 10 snowflakes
Day 11 bird in tree
Day 12 eyes
Day 13 nose
Day 14 mouth
Day 15 right arm and mitten
Day 16 left arm and mitten
Days 17,18,19 buttons
Day 20 moon
Day 21 scarf
Day 22 hat
Day 23 buckle for hat
Day 24 "Merry Christmas" sign

You get the idea.







Hope you give the advent calendar a try and I'll see you soon.

King Tut Pastel Resist

One of my all time favorite techniques is oil pastel resist.  It never fails, always amazes the kids, and produces fantastic results.




I've been taking an Ancient Civilizations history class as inspiration and although there is lots of great material to pull from I couldn't resist trying it on the nemes headdress, which is the striped cloth worn by the pharaohs.

King Tutankhamen's golden mask is probably one of the most well known representation.












MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- brown kraft paper
- reference photos
- pencil and eraser
- oil pastels
- blue disk tempera paint
- black paper for mounting
- white paper
- black and blue sharpie or felt marker
- red and turquoise colored/painted paper
- glue
- gold acrylic paint
- a few jewel embellishments

PROCEDURE:

Take a piece of brown kraft paper.  Using a reference photo draw an outline of the mask.

Take yellow oil pastels and start to fill in the lines on the nemes. 

You want the lines vertical on the top of the headdress, horizontal on the sides.

The Pharaoh's also wore elaborate collars. This is represented in the golden mask as well.  Make these lines curved along the neckline.

Taking blue disk tempera paint, paint over the oil pastel.

On white paper draw out the face and neck.

Paint in the face and neck with gold acrylic paint or yellow tempera.

I like to add yellow acrylic to my gold acrylic paint to brighten it up a bit.  I also find most metallic acrylic paint to be quite translucent these days.  By adding yellow or brown to gold, white or grey to silver, and orange or brown to copper you will brighten that color and make it more opaque.

Paint some extra gold while you are at it for the cobra and vulture heads at the top of the headdress.


Cut out the headdress from the kraft paper.

Cut out the head and neck from the gold painted paper.  Glue into place on the headdress.





Using the black oil pastel add some shading to the face and neck.  Put in a chin line, shade the cowl around the neck, put in the nose and the lips.

On a scrap of white paper trace out the eyes in pencil.  Outline them with blue sharpie or felt marker. Put the pupil in with black pastel.  You want the pupil to touch the top of the blue outline.

Cut out and glue into place.

Using the black sharpie or marker add heavy brows as well as some eyeliner.


You could also use black paint here if you wish.

Take some red and turquoise paper.  This could be cardstock, scrapbooking paper or better yet some painted paper.

Using the extra gold paper make the vulture head and the cobra for the top of the headdress.  Add the mosaic (inlay) to the collar as well.  Add the braided false beard on the chin.  In the gold mask it appears to be quite blue/ almost mauve.

Add a few jewels for embellishment if you wish.

Mount on to black paper.  You can also add a few gold touches with leftover paint if you wish.

That's it.


Have a great weekend everyone and I'll see you next week.

Clay Poppies

The Grade 5's made clay poppies this year.  They are currently in the display case with Grade 1's Poppy Paintings.

They are attracting alot of admirers.

The poppies turned out fabulous so here is the "how to".



















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- clay
- access to a kiln
- poppy reference photos
- a penny nail, wooden skewer, small canvas square to work on
- a rolling pin
- a little cup of water
- a Chinet paper bowl
- glaze
- wax resist, optional

PROCEDURE:

Gather your supplies.  I have the kids work on small squares of canvas, like a placemat.  We use them over and over.  This stops the clay from sticking to their desks and makes clean-up a bit easier.




The Chinet paper bowl is to hold our poppy while it is drying to get that bowl shape.  I have 2 class sets and the get used over and over for other bowl like clay projects. The fact that it is paper allows the clay to dry out nicely.

Roll your clay out to nice slab about 1/2 inch or 1 cm thick.





Take your bowl and push down on it at one corner of your slab.

It will leave an imprint so you can cut your base the right size.  I use this opportunity to discuss with the kids how you don't want to do this in the center of the slab as you want to ensure you have plenty of room to cut your petals.

Cut out the circle base with the penny nail.  We use nails for cutting (they don't break) and wooden skewers for scratching and etching.

Place the base in the paper bowl.

I had images up on the Smartboard for the kids to look at of real poppies.  We talked about different shapes we could use.



Cut out some poppy shapes.  I always stress the use of odd numbers ( looks better design wise) so we were going for 5 or 7.

To attach the petals to the base scratch both surfaces with the skewer and add a little water with your finger.

Continue adding petals.  Have them overhang slightly and you can have some angled up.

Use a little water to smooth any rough edges from the cutting.

I gave the kids several texture tools so they could add some interest to their petals.  Quite a few also just added striations with the skewer.

Roll a ball or some other shape for the center of your poppy.  Attach with scratches and a little water.


Write the student's name on the back of one of the petals.

Leave to dry out.  It took about 6 days for ours. Remove from the Chinet bowls. Keep these for more projects.


Bisque fire in the kiln.

Before glazing I added a coat of wax resist to the bottom of the poppies.  This allows me to fire them without stilting and no worries of them sticking to the shelf.

Glaze with red, wine, and a little purple.  You also need black for the center.

The students also glazed the back of the petals but not the bottom.





Glaze fire.

That's it.  Wonderful job Grade 5!

Here are more photos of this years Painted Poppies by Grade 1.