4th of July Flag!

Everybody now! "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandeeeee, a Yaaaaankee Dooodle Do or Die. A real live nephew of my Unnncle Sam, born on the 4th of July...."
Here's a fun printmaking craft for the holiday.
Thanks bunches to Teach Kids Art for sharing this idea for monoprints!
Thanks bunches to my real live neighbor, really named "Sam" who created this awesome "Flag" monoprint below:) Tempera paint on foil. The paint doesn' t have to be too thick.

Draw "backwards" flag with a Q-tip.

After drawing is complete, cover gently with paper. (We used cardstock)

Roll a brayer lightly over the paper, careful not to move the paper around.

Lift paper carefully from both sides at a time.

And KABOOM! Light the fireworks and celebrate 'cause this is one awesome flag!!!

Edible Art.....

Finally a time to try this edible art lesson & it worked!  I was very nervous about knowing how much food coloring to use in the icing, thinking I'd probably have lots of brown icing among the kids.  Alas, the fretting wasn't justified.  The icing colors were very forgiving and the desired results were easy to achieve.
Also, our grocery store had "mini" vanilla wafers, which delighted me, since I had no idea how many regular size wafers would be in a box.  I wanted every kid to have their own color wheel, so that meant 12 cookies per kid.  One box of "minis" went a long ways.  (FYI-I'd estimate there were approx. 175 mini wafers in one box.)
Each student was given 3 regular size wafers for the primary colors, and 9 minis for the secondary and tertiary colors.  They also got 3 blobs of white icing, and 4 drops of blue food coloring in one, 4 drops of red in other, and 4 drops of yellow in last blob.

They created their color wheel, then decorated "graham cracker" canvases with icing from their wheel.

Here's more about edible color wheel lessons if you want some hints from other teachers who've done this with their students.

 Students painted these graham crackers using toothpicks.

 Below you can see that I gave kids a color wheel, cheat sheet too for this one.  (Reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement.....)

It was fun!!

Picasso Sculptures

 

Found this cool idea on Art Attack.  It's filed under 3D Sculptures.  Unfortunately the kids used the "dreaded" word "ugly" a lot during this project, but I still think it was worth the effort.  There were a few of them that the students wanted to take home, but most ended up in the trash.  Tsk, tsk....

Directions:  (Acquire LOTS of boxes!)

1. Disfigure large box, then tape corners of other boxes on it for facial features.

2. Add torn paper and watered down glue to entire outside of sculpture, and let dry.

3. Outline cubism areas and paint.

4.  Add features w/ paint or markers.

5. Add black lines to emphasize the cubism.

This one is awesome!  This student really gets cubism, eh?

Here is a "Picasso Duck" on one side and "Picasso Monkey" on the other.  Very cute, and it went home with its lovely creator!

"Picasso Nature"

Thanks No. Co. Christian High School students.