Jumping on the heart bandwagon!

This fun (and messy) quickie lesson was intended to fill in the space between other stuff. It took two sessions, but turned out to be a lot tougher for my 2nd graders than I expected, though in the end everyone was successful and happy.

We began by choosing 2 colors of tissue paper, and cutting out hearts (this was a hard part, for sure!). We used our papier-mache paste ("art paste") to glue them down with a paintbrush.

Then everyone took one toilet paper tube and crunched it into a heart shape for printing. Thanks to the blogger who recommended this to me, though I could not find where or who that was. The kids had a hard time making the heart shape, so I went around the room and crunched for them. They LOVED stamping the hearts! I let them use both ends of the tube, and a few kids discovered they were also making heart stamps in their palms, because of the paint on both ends. They were SO excited about this!

We completed these today by selecting a construction paper mat for a border, and then using a thin Sharpie and other thin markers to write things we love, and to add more design and color. I was tickled at how many kids wrote "I love art" or "I love my art teacher". Some of their spelling is pretty funny, but I really like what they wrote. A lot of them wrote "I love myself"! I guess they have pretty strong self-images. Hmmm...