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FIND INSPIRATION FOR PROJECTS HERE! 

2ND GRADE!

WARHOL

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Screen printing activities are a lot of work but so much fun. Andy Warhol is the PERFECT artist to make a printing project with. Each student can express their individuality even though we're all doing the same project.  

Items you will need: 
styrofoam plates 
dull pencils/ ball point pens (most of the kids should have a dull pencil 
paper
tape 
black paint
roller brush 
black construction paper
neon colored paper or bright colored paper

PREP- This is a HIGH PREP activity. To save time in the classroom I cut the bright colored paper into squares and glue them onto the black paper BEFORE i went into the class. I also cut the styrofoam plates to the size of my papers, so a fourth of the black paper. I then took a sheet of regular printer paper and cut that to size and taped it to my styrofoam piece. 

When we went to do the project each student had on their desk : the four squared glued paper , the styrofoam piece pre taped and asked to pull out a pencil. 

step 1: direct the students to draw something they really love or something that represents them. make sure you tell them to pic something with bold lines and not too many details. I used a smiley face for an example. Lots of students drew the "among us" guy and he worked great. You're going to want to do this lightly not too much pressure

step 2: Once they have the image down you'll then tell them to go back over the lines now but pressing down with more pressure to give the styrofoam plate beneath the paper an indent. 

step 3: we had a inking station by the sink in the class room , students lined up and we rolled their stamp for them and they stamped it four times on their paper. 

You'll want a helper for this in the classroom maybe two inking stations. 
 

HIGH
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Another great way to get the same Warhol effect for less work is using the childs hands. You can direct the students here to do all of the project, the cutting of paper , gluing and hand prints! 
 

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MONET

Inspired by Monet's water lillies we made our own! You'll need 

Cardboard pieces cut into pond shapes
blue green yellow paint 
tissue paper 
green paper for the lillies 
plastic spoons

PREP TIME: You will need to cut your pond shapes ahead of time and I used my circut to cut lilly pads, you can either have the kids do these or cut them ahead of time. I also precut my tissue paper so each kid had a zipbloc bag of lilly pads, tissue paper , and spoon 

Step 1: put dots of green yellow and blue white paint on each students cardboard piece. Direct the kids to smear the paint until it looks like water reflection like the painting! 

Step 2: Have students place their lilly pads and glue their tissue paper in place 

You can even go one step further and make frogs from model magic to add to your scene if you'd like! 
 

MEDIUM 
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HOPPER

MAKE SAILBOATS!!!! The possibilities or different ways that you can do this are ENDLESS!!! They can be as unique as each student is or you can do projects as a group like the one pictured here. 
Below is the site that gives you directions to this cute craft! 
 

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Another way that you can do this is find a template of a sailboat to cut out for each student and have them decorate or color the sail boat! I used pastels simply because we hadn't worked with pastels yet! But you can do it any way! Make sure they name their sailboat, that was my favorite part listening to why they named their boat the name they did! For a display you can even make them all a collective piece of art by having it look like they're on waves in the ocean! If you want to bring down prep time you could have the student cut their own boat out too! 
 

MEDIUM 
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WHISTLER

Whistler painted his beloved Mother. So what better activity to do then try to paint someone special to us? 
For this project I emailed the teacher ahead of time to ask students or send a blast to parents to have students bring photos of someone special to them. 
I cut watercolor paper in half for this project because a smaller canvas is easier to do 


Water color helps by being able to wipe off easily when they make a mistake or combine colors to create a new color. You can encourage tracing if they have a window available or look up at the light and lightly draw the outline of their person. 

Students will want to bring their masterpiece home. We did this in November and everyone wanted to take for their fall break to give to their person so be aware that they'll want to take it home! Lots of kids painted their friends which was sweet! 
 

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LOW 
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GEROME

This guy is the perfect chance to break out the model projects!!! Crayola.com has a lot of activities that you can look at but if you wanted to create something with the students that they could use then this little bookmark idea is a great start! The button below will take you to more instructions. Be mindful that we only have WHITE colored model magic so they would have to paint their bookmark too! 
 

Another neat thing you could do that's still a sculpting idea is have the students make whatever they want but then have them paint them gold or silver much like his sculpture! Then you'll have a display of all kinds of different sculptures!! You could also do this with actual clay just be aware that you will want to cut the clay beforehand and place the clumps in baggies to hand out! So that's prep time! 
 

LOW 
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WOOD

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Besides the famous "American Gothic" painting , Wood also did stain glass. You can do this with wax paper and tissue paper. 

what you'll need: 
1. wax paper
2.glue stick (NO LIQUID GLUE) 
3. tissue paper 
4.black paper for the frame


Have the students glue tissue paper to their wax paper, make sure they glue the tissue paper on the sticky side of the wax paper. S

Sandwhich the masterpiece with the other wax paper and iron it together. You can also use a laminator. If you don't want to use the iron at school you can have them finish the piece by adhering their frame to it and trimming the excess and you can iron it at home. If you use a laminator DO NOT put wet liquid glue in a laminator it will ruin your laminator!! But if only glue sticks were used you'll be safe to use a laminator for the end of this project. 

Below is the frame template if you'd like to cut it and trace it.  A cricut machine can make this part easier , blast an email to see if volunteers have a cricut that you can use.

 

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Making some parodies to the famous American Gothic I also think would be funny and cute! 2nd graders might have trouble knowing where to start so offer a template to get them started. Or just have them free draw, some might not want a template and that's okay, but it's nice to give them an option. 

 

LOW
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CEZANNE

Check out this genius construction paper mosaic from Crayola that incorporates two of Cezanne’s themes – still life and landscapes. Use different shades of the same color when preparing the paper so you can recreate Cezanne’s trademark color gradation.

 

LOW
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