Where has the summer gone???!!! (Summer Program Week 1)

Um...staff development days next week on Tuesday and Wednesday...start of the school year on Thursday??  I know a lot of you are already back to school, but up here in New York, we wait until after Labor Day to start.  I have been meaning to post about the four weeks of summer program I worked at school in July, but in typical fashion as it seems once you have a child, it gets pushed aside!  My goal now is to do four posts about what we accomplished in July for art projects so that I can post my back to school pictures and such next week!

So here we go:

Week one of the summer program had record attendance.  I believe we had about 26 students ranging from grades 4-7 attend the first week, therefore the projects I started with were pretty basic and simple.

For the first two days, we made signs.  I purchased these blank signs from Oriental Trading.  I showed the students how to trace and cut out the shape of the sign on scrapbook paper, and then how to Mod Podge it onto the sign.  A few students also used the fancy duct tape to decorate their signs.  We used various ribbons, buttons and flowers to embellish them.  I also looked up how to make chalkboard paint (because mysteriously, my can of chalkboard paint disappeared from my elementary room...hmmm).  I took a poll for colors and mixed chalkboard paint using acrylic and grout (the kind without sand).

Of course, the zebra print with Camille written on it was mine!  It matches her room! ;)

The second project we completed during the first week were these mini trays.  Again, these were purchased through Oriental Trading.  On the first day, the students painted them and then laid out a pattern with mosaic pieces to grout on the inside.  A few students opted to do chalkboard paint again instead of the mosaics, or painted the backside with the chalkboard paint and then mosaic-ed the inside.  I used a standard indoor grout that I had in my cupboards and then these mosaic pieces from Nasco.  On the second day, we mixed the grout and put the pieces into place!

2nd Grade: Greek Mosaics

Well, I missed "throwback Thursday" but I'll post these today anyhow.  These mosaics were from way back when I had a substitute for my maternity leave.  I asked her to do it in conjunction with the 2nd grade NYS Listening & Learning strand about Ancient Greek civilizations.  This project wasn't exactly executed the way that I would have handled it, but a few of the projects did turn out decent.

I had my substitute use Roylco's Mosaic Squares, something I had purchased a few years back through the Extended Day grant and have never used.  I can't find the link to the sticky ones, but those are actually the ones that were used for this, not the paper squares.  Anyways, I have decided that if I do this project again, I will have the students cut up construction paper into random geometric shapes to fill in their spaces.  I had encouraged her to have the students cut the stickers in half to fit into smaller spaces, but no one did.  In other words, I plan on essentially combining this project with the geometric and organic shape collages that my 2nd graders did the year before.

Symmetrical Butterflies

For our last 1st grade project, I wanted to do butterflies (which matched up with what they were learning in class), but I ended up running out of time to do an Eric Carle style painted butterfly with texture, similar to this idea on Pinterest.  I had to drastically shorten this project in order to complete it before the end of the year, so I came up with this instead.

I have a variety of different shaped butterfly patterns so students picked which shape they wanted and traced it on white tag board.  They colored the body on the butterfly and then cut it out.

For the next step, we talked about symmetry on butterflies.  I passed out the mosaic stickers I have (used previously on a 6th grade Mexican Folk Art Mirrors) and had the students create a symmetrical design on the wings using the stickers.  All of this took one class period.

The second class, students had to use crayons to finish coloring their butterfly.  This was definitely a quick project but I'd say a majority of the students really understood about basic symmetry at the end!