Ms. Gross's Art Gallery

For this project, we made fish out of pop cans and a bottle cap ocean scenery background. The students worked individually on the fish and that was the project that was graded. The background was put together using teamwork, but was not scored. In order to make the fish, my partner and I crushed pop cans ahead of time. We then painted the fish the colors we desired. We required that the students use at least three colors and two patterns on their fish. The fins were made from construction paper. Finally, students were asked to write why it is important to reduce, reuse, and recycle. In order to make the background scenery, we painted cardboard using tempera paint. When it was time to present, we asked the students to glue bottle caps of matching color onto the cardboard. An extension project for this could be for the students to make a jungle themed project instead of or in addition to an ocean scenery. They could learn about how plastics and other types of pollution...

This project was fun and easy to make. The first step was to make a design using at least two colors on white card stock. We were told to press down while coloring with crayon to make the design. Next, we taped the edges onto a piece of cardboard. After that, we painted a mixture of soap and black paint over our design until the card stock was completely covered in black. While we were letting the paint dry, we drew a mitten on a piece of paper with two different types of lines and cut it out. Then we filled out the note card that was displayed alongside our mitten. When the paint was dry, we traced the outline of the mitten with a stick or pencil. Finally, we cut out the mitten on our card stock and we were finished.  An extension activity for this could be for the students to scratch off the outline of an animal and write facts about it on a note card to be displayed next to it. 

In order to make the totem poles, we chose a light-colored piece of construction paper. We could either draw on the features of the animal or use more construction paper to make 3-d parts. I chose to make an otter and used both construction paper and markers to add to my animal. We were required to include three colors and two patterns. An extension activity would be to have the students make the poles into people they admire (historical or current public figures). For example, if someone really liked Thomas Jefferson, they could try to make a totem pole that looks like him. Then on note card attached to it, the student could example why they chose that person and a few interesting facts about them.