Wednesday 3 October 2012

In A Dark, Dark Wood


I wanted to share with you the artwork that inspired me to start a blog.  I did this lesson with my Grade One class last year.  After displaying it up on the hallway bulletin board I was approached by one of my fellow primary teachers, Sandra Farrell, who asked if she could put it up on her teaching blog.  I was so flattered!  So I considered the idea of starting my own art blog.

Check out the orginial post on her website http://savvyteachingtips.blogspot.ca/
Her photos are much more impressive than my 'afterthought' iphone ones!  Sandra teaches Grade two and has tonnes of great resources for all you primary teachers.  Make sure you check out her other blogs too.  She is a very talented scrapbooker and cardmaker!!!




I had seen a few different examples of this type of tint and shade lesson on Pinterest, mostly done with a cityscape or a single tree silhouette.  I had been saving these craft foam haunted houses for at least 2 years and was determined to incorporate them into some type of activity.  After reading In A Dark, Dark Wood with my class, the two ideas seemed a natural fit!



We started out by painting a white moon shape in the sky.  We then added a small amount of blue paint to the white paint pot to create the first tint.  We painted a circle around the moon using the new tinted colour.  We then added a bit more blue paint to the paint pot and repeated the process.  I have 5 table groupings in the classroom and each table had one pot of paint to use.  The kids took turns adding blue and mixing the new tint.

After a certain point the kids just painted the rest of the paper with the last tint.  The paintings were left to dry.



We then attached the foam houses to the bottom of the paper.  Next we used black markers to draw some spooky trees.  The kids were instructed to keep the trees shorter than the house to make sure the scale of the drawings fit with the size of the house.


The final touch was colouring in the windows with a white pencil crayon.







It all made for a wonderful October display.

24 comments:

  1. Love this! There's a spin-off lesson in the poem too, I'm sure! I've pinned this for future use, hope that's ok!! :)

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    1. Thanks Elizabeth! You have permission to pin. I did this lesson last year so I don't have samples of the writing we did. But they wrote their own patterned descriptive poems such as "In a Bright, Bright City" or "In a Spooky, Spooky Castle". Thanks for commenting!

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    2. By the way, I FINALLY got my "Permission To Pin" button onto my website. Thanks for always being so curtious and asking if its ok to pin my stuff!!

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  2. So glad you got that pin button to work. Did you figure out how html code works?? I got some nice comments about your halloween trees so I'm in the process of posting up about your blog. You always have such great art ideas.
    Sandra

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I finally figured it out! Thanks for helping me with that. And thanks for being my inspiration to start blogging!

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  3. I love this activity. I saw it on a blog which led me to Sandra's blog which led me here. Kind of a crazy way to find you. I'm a classroom teacher and for many years I've wanted to move away from crafts to real art in my class but was always kind of scared and didn't really know how. Last year I started making the shift. I'm loving what my kids are doing now. Just this week we did some apple still life art, and what they can do blows me away. I love following art blogs like yours for new ideas of what I can try in my class. I'm looking forward to trying these haunted pictures with them. Thanks!
    ❀ Tammy
    Forever in First

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comments Tammy. I'm happy to hear that you are being brave to try some new things! I hope you can get a lot of use out of my site.
      Rozana

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  4. I love the haunted house art!! In a Dark, Dark Wood is one of my favorite books for beginning readers. I'm going to try this with my class. Thanks for sharing!!
    Connie Anderson :)
    www.welcometofirstgraderoom5.blogspot.com

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  5. This is such a beautiful art project! I'm going to try it with my grade 3's!

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    1. Thanks Donna! Let me know how it turns out!

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  6. I LOVE this activity and can't wait to do it with my class. I went looking this weekend for the houses but didn't have any luck. WHere do you usually get yours from?

    I'm also thinking we may not get to this till Nov. so maybe we would just make it a sunset pic with just the trees. What do you think?

    I know my grade ones LOVE any project that involves paint!

    Thanks so much!

    Janice

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    Replies
    1. Hi Janice. I bought them at Michaels. They come in a container with trees, bats, pumpkins and ghosts. Now that you mention it, I can't say I've seen them this year. But I haven't really been looking for them.

      You could easily do this in November. In fact, I went into my daughter's Grade 1/2 class later that year and did it with them. We did it portrait-style on full sized paper. After the backround was dry they painted one large leafless tree with an owl silhoutte on one of the branches. Then they used white paint to make the glowing eyes of the owl. If you do use paint make sure you use thin brushes. You could even cut out silhouettes from back construction paper to glue on top.

      Hope that helps! Good luck with it!

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  7. Thanks so much. It was Michaels I was at yesterday. However I din't realize the pieces were foam.... so maybe I missed them. I like the idea of trees with owls and I'm thinking of maybe adding some snowflakes as well. Should be fun!

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    Replies
    1. Great idea! If you are already ready for a winter scene, you could even change from a black silhouette to white. Consider doing a white snow landscape with a snowman out of white constuction paper to glue on top and paint on the white snowflakes. Best of luck!

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  8. Beaufiful! We did a similar project and I wish I would have found you blog earlier, so my kids had your kids' work for more inspiration.

    Laurie
    Chickadee Jubilee

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    Replies
    1. You are sweet. I think your kids did a great job too!

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  9. Hello!
    Sandra recommended I stop by and say hello! I thought it was Sandra's post on the Haunted House project so I mentioned her in my October post. She said the pictures were actually from your projects! Thank you for the inspiration!
    Julie

    Ms. Marciniak's First Grade Critter Cafe

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for visiting! Your kids did a great job with the project too!

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  10. Soooo beautiful! Love all great deas that followed, too! What kind of paint did you use and paper? Thank you for sharing your class management tips too. So helpful! How did you assess the final project - do you have a rubric?

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