Finished 3rd Grade Castles!

We are FINALLY finishing up with our cardboard castles (you can see how we built them here)!  Between vacation time, half-days and snow days, it seems like we've been working on them FOREVER (since the end of January)!  These took up soooo much room in my classroom, I'm glad to be done with them!  By the time we finished constructing them, I had wanted students to draw some nice details to cut out and put inside, like dragons, knights, etc. but believe it or not, they complained about it!  (Which is weird because this particular group of students is OBSESSED with the medieval times...last year we did two dragon projects because they kept asking for them!)  So, needless to say, I'm a little unhappy with some of the craftsmanship on the details...of the few students who did add details, they cut a bubble around their objects, instead of cutting them out neatly on the line....sigh.

I did, however, like that they wanted to incorporate felt...that was something I hadn't thought of.  So, here they are, our finished cardboard castles.  You can check out the rest on our Artsonia gallery!

This one had some of my favorite outside decorations...these cool, "magical" mushrooms!

This student didn't exactly follow directions for the tower roofs, but I couldn't knock him for his creativity...it's still a pretty cool looking castle.

This castle was done by a student who is very precise in his artwork.  He fought me up and down to not put any details on his castle so it wouldn't mess up his brick.  He also refused to paint the inside of the castle, which I wasn't too found of.  (Not fond of the use of tape either...)  This student was really creative with his drawbridge...it works to go up and down on it's own!

Another creative roof...the castle's flag!

If I ever do this project again, we'll definitely use the sponge-texture for the bricks instead of painting the brick lines.  It was so much faster.  I also think I'll definitely make them paint the inside, at least a solid black color.  Even though we covered the boxes with gesso, you can still see some of the cereal box print through the primer which I find distracting.

3rd Grade Castles & Science: Simple Machine Pulley Drawbridge

Here is the latest update on our 3rd grade castles!  My previous post on these told you how I had one class paint their castles...you can see from the photos below the different technique I had the other class use...sponges.  I think I like this technique better than the first!

For our last class, we spent time making our draw bridges work.  I supplied yarn, paper clips, hole punches, wooden dowels and toilet paper rolls, upon request.  I did not demonstrate how to make these work to students.  Instead, I told them they had to use their problem solving skills and what they learned in science class to make a pulley system for their drawbridge.  While some of these aren't exactly true pulleys, I'd say they did a pretty good job!  One class was particularly more creative than the other with their draw bridges and a lot of the boys actually made their bridges move with a crank!

3rd Grade Castles: In Progress

It's taking us almost 3 class periods to get our castles painted completely with class A, so I'm trying something different with class B.  

Here are class A's castles in progress:  (1)First we painted over the shiny cereal box part with gesso.  (2)Then, we used round sponge brushes too dab on some stone texture.  I had the students sponge on some white first, and then before it dried, they sponged on the black over the top.  (3) Finally, we are using a medium, flat brush to paint the brick pattern on.

Even though we reviewed how to make a brick pattern, there were quite a few students who just painted a grid! :-/

I will have class B on Friday this week, so I'll share their castles then.  For class B, I had them paint their castles all black, and then we will sponge on the bricks using a grey tempera paint and rectangular sponges.  I have the feeling that I'll like how both techniques turn out, but when I do this project in the future, I'll choose one technique based on the amount of time I'm willing to spend on this.

This project is definitely taking a lot of time, but they're definitely turning out awesome!  The 3rd grade teachers give me complements on them and can't wait to see them when they're done!

Once we're finished painting we need to add the cone roofs to each tower, and draw some dragons, knights, etc. to cut out and glue on the inside!