Kindergarten - 2nd graders were inspired to make Sunflowers after reading the non-fiction book A Field of Sunflowers by Neil Johnson.
We also looked at a few books on Van Gogh and many illustrations of his art work that were displayed in the classroom.
The project began by using a mixture of shaving cream and blue paint to create the "swirling background" using their FINGERS. This was so exciting and very messy, but they had a ball! I would encourage you to tell your students to only use 2 fingers to swirl and not their entire hand. Also if they swirl to much it will turn into a solid blue background as some of the ones you will see posted did.
Next we painted sheets of newspaper yellow to use for the petals. They were able to use both painted and non-painted since we discussed non-fiction text and newspapers are a great source of non-fiction.
Brown paper sacks were used to create the center of the sunflower. Some drew seeds in the center. They used tissue paper and construction paper to create the stem and grass.
Their final piece was to to do a small writing about something they learned about sunflowers and glue on the front.
What if you had Animal Teeth is a MUST non-fiction read! We did these cartoon sketches with my 5th graders and EVERY GRADE is begging me to read it with them. Love the illustrations and the cool facts we have learned about animal teeth. Opens the doors for lots of research opportunities!.JPG&container=blogger&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image%2F*)
My students had to add a writing component with their pieces also...some did facts, poems, short stories, etc.
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And even better is what KINDERGARTEN is going to do with the book. I love the first page of the book where it talks about Kate using nature to create artwork and get her hands dirty. This week my kinder artist will be using nature to paint their backgrounds...and finishing their pieces with a muddy hand print right on top. Yep...I will probably pull my hair out...but how stinking cute it will be!
