Blob monsters and shaving cream?! - 2 "borrowed" projects

I've been borrowing from other bloggers again! Even those of us who have been around for a while can still find new ideas and techniques. It's always more fun to try something new, or at least put a new spin on an old lesson, than it is to just repeat... repeat... repeat!

Kindergarten organic "blob monsters" - I discovered this lesson at We Heart Art.
I didn't deviate much from the lesson posted there. Anyone who knows me knows I'm terrified of kindergartners - I'd rather teach a group of any other age. The K's are, basically, "tadpoles" - still developing. I began my teaching career with 9 years of high school art, so switching gears so dramatically was a real struggle. Still, after 25+ years, I still struggle with teaching kindergarten. So I'm always thrilled to find a lesson that is just perfect for these little guys.

Anyhow, about this lesson: We read the book Jeremy Draws a Monster and made an organic shape with a piece of yarn on our paper. We traced around the yarn with a crayon, and then got imaginative. We first talked about how to make eyes look like eyes, etc, but mostly we just had fun imagining. Some monsters were silly, some mean, and each one was unique.

I liked this lesson so much, when we had a little extra time in first grade today, we did the same exact thing, only we used construction paper crayons on colored paper. The results were again adorable and the kids really were proud of their monsters. Unfortunately I sent the artwork home and forgot to take pictures!

And here are some silhouettes on 9"x12" paper marbled with shaving cream and liquid watercolors. I do a silhouette project with 5th graders every year, usually on a watercolored paper, sometimes sprinkled with salt, but this was the first time I tried it using a marbled sky.

A lot of people have posted about making marbled paper with shaving cream. I'd never tried it, but we had a blast doing it. I did do some things a little differently than other people, though. I had the kids tape off a rectangle on their table the size of their paper, and then set the paper aside. I sprayed the shaving cream directly on the table, not in a tray like most others have done. I had a variety of liquid watercolors available, and after the kids spread out their shaving cream (kind of like frosting a cake) the kids dripped the paint on and used pop sticks to swirl it around. We were trying to make Van Gogh-like swirls, but some kids got carried away and swirled too much. In the end the results were still useable, and most kids got to spread their cream out a second time and do a second print. They picked which one to use for their silhouette and saved the other to use at a later date.

Cleanup was maybe the most fun of all. The kids used squares of cardboard to squeegee the excess shaving cream off the tables, and gathered up mountains of it in their hands. They were enthralled. Then, I passed out sponges and the shaving cream, even with paint in it, worked as a wonderful table cleaner and the room smelled fabulous too! It was so easy to clean up, that I can't imagine using some sort of tray. My tables are easily washable and everyone was happy.

By the way - the little bits of shine and sparkle on some of these pictures are scraps of metallic contact paper I have, or, as in the crown on the Statue of Liberty, metallic paint dabbed on with a Q-tip stick. The contact paper doesn't show true color in the photos - the stuff the kids used was either plain mirror-like silver, or silver with sort of a holographic look that has a pattern of tiny circular designs that look like little CD's (hence the moon and reflection in the lighthouse image).

The black is Sharpie (for tiny details) and India ink. The kids love using it. I find that the concept of silhouettes is a challenge for some kids to understand, which is why I try to incorporate a silhouette lesson with my 5th graders somehow every year. I was surprised this year - no roller coasters, only one city, no castles, only one bridge, no trains, only one howling wolf, no helicopters, etc. I had an image box they could sift through and I couldn't interest anyone in the cupolas and weathervanes I had. This group of kids really struggled with ideas but in the end I think they did pretty well.