EK Pre-K-4th Grade Christmas Program

As I've said before, I come from a very small school district that does not have much diversity at it.  Because of that, we still celebrate holidays at school.  Every year the Pre-K through 4th grade puts on a Christmas program, and every year I have my art club students paint the backdrop for it.  Here is the put together set!

Reindeer painted by the high school art teacher.

We do the play in the big gym.

Our mural!

And this is what I did on my day off when I went in to help out with the Christmas program...and yes, there are some inside jokes in these hats! 

Christmas Program Mural: Art Club

Tomorrow is our annual PreK-4th grade Christmas program.  A few gung-ho teachers get together each year and coordinate a cute little Christmas program with a little bit of acting from the 4th graders and singing by the other grades.  I haven't had much to do with the acting part, but the scenery is another story!  I drew out the scene and had my art club kids paint the backdrop.  It took us two after school days (of about one hour) to paint this, and then I did some touch up and added the black lines to the house today.  Here's our backdrop!  More pictures to come from the performance!

 From the first day of painting...we painted the sky blue with some violet...and started the house...

Somewhere along the way, I lost the pictures I took on the second day...so these are from today!

On the second day, we finished the house, the snow and added the trees.

Today I added the black lines on the house and touched up a few spots here and there...

Kindergarten: Sponge-Paint Snowmen

Kindergarten just finished up a snowman unit.  It worked out perfect because I didn't know they were learning about snow in their classroom!  This unit took us a total of three days to do from start to finish.

Day 1: On the first day, we built a snowman as a class on the smartboard using some snowman games.  The particular snowman game (I call it a game...it really isn't a game...just an interactive activity to build a snowman, though I'm sure you could turn it into a game!) came from Castle Arcana.  I went to this website and saved the site to my hard drive.  It saves it as a shockwave flash file and makes it easier to find instead of hunting through websites to find it.  They even have other fun activities for the smartboard like the trim a Christmas tree activity.  (Here is the link to the Castle Arcana Christmas activities page.)

Anyways, after building a snowman or two as a class (so everyone gets the chance to come up), I gave everyone a "Roll-A-Snowman" game to do for the rest of the period.  Right now, I don't have my worksheet at home.  I based this off the Roll-A-Monster game.  I searched for a similar snowman one and couldn't find one, so I made my own template for the dice games and drew in my own snowman features.  The kids LOVE these games!  They are great to play with K-1 too because, as I found out, they are working with recognizing the numbers on the dice in their classroom!  Here is my template I made and a few student examples.  Tomorrow I'll be sure to post my filled out Roll-A-Snowman game that I made.

I did this with my 12:1:1 class as well...on of the aides thought this was great and suggested I let the kids make their own dice game using a blank grid!  WHAT?  WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT!?

Day 2: On the second day, we reviewed how to build a snowman (large ball, medium ball, small ball).  I passed out large blue construction paper and these great foam dauber brushes I bought this year. We used these brushes before on the fall trees (which I just realized I never posted about! Whoops!) when we talked about pointillism, so it was a great review.  We talked about how the pointillism effect would help create the texture of fluffy snow.

Day 3: On the last day, we used various types of objects to add the details.  Buttons, pipe cleaners, foam, felt, beads, etc.  I changed it up with each class as to what they got to use depending on how wild they were when they came in.  I also let them use markers to add some details (many tried to draw Santa and the reindeer in the sky). One class used gel glitter glue to add snowflakes.  One class used q-tips and white paint, and the other two I sprayed with fake snow.

I love the one on the right!  This was the only student who did something different with his snowman!  I was a little worried he didn't understand about snowman on the second day when we did the sponge painting, but when he started adding his details, I have to say I was impressed!

It always makes me giggle a little because some kindergartners (and even 1st and 2nd graders!) don't realize that their people are naked!  It's winter!!! ;)

These two have some of the spray snow...

This one has the glitter glue stuff...

Poinsettia Bowls

Here are the 4th grade, Class A's, finished poinsettia bowls.  I'm going to be a little nervous firing these as on the second day, they weren't as focused on rolling their slabs as thin.  (Friday seemed to be a bonkers day for most of the students...is there a full moon coming up??) Some of these are a little on the thick side!  I had to rush the students a tad bit too, as I can only give them two days to work with the clay, otherwise it would start getting too dry to work with.  This group started them on Monday and then I didn't have them until Friday again.  I did go through with a needle tool and poke some holes, just in case!

Paper Mache Houses, Round 2: Christmas!

On Tuesday I started a second round of paper mache houses with the after school crew.  This time, we are doing holiday/Christmas/winter houses!  So far, they are turning out awesome again!  On Tuesday we painted the base coat and today we started adding decorations.  Pipe cleaners became wreaths, fences, and candy canes.  Pom poms became lights and snowmen!  I only wish the kids would get this creative with their other projects! (Sorry for the picture inundation!  I took my new camera to school today and couldn't stop snapping photos!)  These houses were purchased from eNasco, not built by students or myself.  Here is my previous post with the Halloween houses we made in October.

This one is mine...going for a gingerbread house look!

Love this one!  It turned out so cute!

Christmas Pastels

One more post for tonight...my day today was pretty long.  It felt like it was never going to end and my patience was running short.  I almost forgot about planning something for the Extended Day program too, so I decided to do Christmas pastel drawings with the kids as they usually like using oil pastels.

To my astonishment, they turned out AWESOME!  And, I was completely baffled by two of the boys who did this project...in art class, they usually aren't what I would consider my star students.  They tend to cause drama and be trouble makers because they are "bored".  They did AMAZING on their oil pastel drawings!  I think I might have embarrassed them from all the praise I gave them!  In fact, one of them asked me, "Mrs. Impey, this isn't going to count for my grade is it?"  No, but, I told him, lucky for you, our next unit in 4th grade will be making poinsettia  clay bowls and then doing an oil pastel close-up drawing of a poinsettia.  He was incredibly HAPPY at this news...even though I told him we would be drawing flowers!

When they finished, I pulled out the "masters frames" that I purchased this year and let them attach them to the frames.  Of course, I played a little favoritism and let the two below put their drawings in a real mat...

These are the two I'm talking about!  Both done in different styles...but both amazing! The red one was done by a 4th grader, and the other by a 5th grader.

Another awesome drawing by a 5th grader.

4th Grader

4th Grader

5th Grader

5th Grader