Winter Wonderland Art

Well the last two weeks have been busy at our school with 4 days of skiing. We lucked out and had beautiful weather with around -2 degrees Celsius all days :) It feels like we didn't do much school work over these 2 weeks. During the first week skiing was Wednesday and Thursday so on Friday my kiddos were EXHAUSTED. I decided that we would watch Maniac Magee since we just finished the novel. It isn't the best quality but hey it filled the time while my class recouped from skiing.
During the second week we went on Wednesday and Friday so they were not as tired and we could get some work done. We completed a winter art project (inspired by this Pinterest link) that had to be done over 3 days because of waiting for paint to dry. Biggest lesson my class learned....patience ! 
As I did my example I took pictures so you can see the steps.  
Step 1: Paint the snow at the bottom of the page. I told my class that about 1/3 of the page should be the snow base.

Step 2: THE HARDEST STEP
Somewhere in the top part of the page paint a white circlish (new made-up word) shape. We used plastic plates for the paint and students had 2 colours only (white and blue). To the white add a SMALL amount of blue paint. Paint around the white circlish shape with the new paint colour. It is okay (preferable even) to overlap the paint to help with blending and not making it look like stripes around the middle circle. Then continue this with gradually adding blue paint to make it darker as you move outward from the white circlish shape. Let dry

Step 3: Using black paint only, paint shilouttes of things you would see outside during winter. Let dry. 

Ok this is where my students struggled with patience. They wanted to do the final stage and set he finished product.

 Step 4: Add snow if wanted. I used a Q-tip here but some of my students used a paintbrush. It is up to you. Let dry and then display.


My school only had a lighter blue paint so it was hard to make it dark. I would love to have done this with a navy blue paint but that is life. I think they still turned out okay and the bulletin board is eye-catching in the hallway. 

Here are some examples that my Gr4/5s did.

 

 

Have fun painting with your class and if you need an idea for paint containers in your classroom check out my previous post on reusing Lunchable containers for paint ! 

Since this project was inspired by Pinterest I thought I would leave a link to my Winter Pinterest Board ! I would love for you to follow any of my boards. If you have a great Pinterest board dedicated to art I would LOVE it if you could leave a link in the comments so I can follow it also. I am obsessed with Pinterest and finding new art ideas :)

Cheers,