This week the third graders and I created artwork inspired by a project from Deep Space Sparkle. We painted our very own Mayflower ships using watercolors and tempera paints. In Deep Space Sparkle's post the talks about the differences between "cookie cutter art" and open ended art. With the third graders I tried to give them lots of different options to make their ships their own. We first drew guidelines and details with crayons. We added in sea monsters, suns, moons, stars, whatever their hearts desired. Once our lines were drawn we talked about the "wet on wet" process for painting with watercolors and tried it out. They could paint their ships at night, sunset, sunrise, or during the day by using different colors in the sky. Once our watercolor backgrounds were dry we painted our ships using tempera paints and printed on sails with sponges. I love how they turned out and even though we all made images of the same ships, they all look different and unique- just like each of the kiddos personalities in my room!
(Did I mention that we did all of this in 45 minutes? I was so impressed with how well they followed along!)
(Did I mention that we did all of this in 45 minutes? I was so impressed with how well they followed along!)