When my students had finished the big sloth unit at the beginning of the semester, I knew I did not want to jump right into painting. Chalk is so unbelievably messy that I just needed a simple project for a few days to recover. I was telling another specials teacher about my dilemma and she gave a simple suggestion: have them draw a jersey from their favorite team.
Hmmmmm. That would be pretty easy....and it would give me a chance to reinforce iPad procedures since kids might need to look up team colors or information.
That could work. So simple. So easy.
What started out as a one-day thing stretched out for two weeks. Because with me, it can never just be easy...it has to be a full blown unit.....
First, students got a message from flash. Which I read painfully slowly, like a sloth. At first they were incredulous, but then when I mentioned the word JERSEY, they got excited, especially the boys.
Hmmmmm. That would be pretty easy....and it would give me a chance to reinforce iPad procedures since kids might need to look up team colors or information.
That could work. So simple. So easy.
What started out as a one-day thing stretched out for two weeks. Because with me, it can never just be easy...it has to be a full blown unit.....
First, students got a message from flash. Which I read painfully slowly, like a sloth. At first they were incredulous, but then when I mentioned the word JERSEY, they got excited, especially the boys.
Day one, students practiced their jerseys in their sketchbooks. I printed off simple visual outlines of football, baseball, soccer, and basketball jersey. I ended up adding cheerleading, volleyball, rodeo, track and gymnastics visuals into the mix for kids who needed to be creative about their team sports.
Once they had drawn the jersey, they used 9X12 white paper to draw their jersey and 6-9 additional symbols from their sport. The symbol could be a football, a player's number or anything else that would work to represent the team---they had to draw a 'grid' to organize their symbols.
Then, everything was outlined in sharpie. Sometimes, I hate letting them use pencil first because they can never seem to erase pencil lines very well. I am very picky about erasing.
I decided to limit them to crayons for this project in order to have adequate color options. In the future, maybe I will use colored pencils.....
I even went to Wal-Mart to buy a 105 color box of crayons because I only have one sky blue and NO brick red in my entire inventory.....how can you truly match a team's colors without using the right shade of red/blue?! Next year I am definitely ordering multiple crayon color sets.....I don't know how my requisition only sent me the standard 24 colors again this year...I really thought I had ordered the big assortment this year....all well.
My reasoning behind this project was two-fold, I really wanted to get my sports-minded students excited about the art, and I really wanted to learn a little about their interests. Sometimes if you don't give them a chance to put the Denver Broncos on something, it will end up making its way into their artwork one way or another. The project ended up being a bit of a snooze...and it is not one of my favorites.
I absolutely love the 'grid' layout that Kathy uses on her projects for kids. For this project, we used a similar format.
In fact, half way through the FOREVER it took for them to color these babies, I had to take a day off.
It was a beautiful Friday at the end of September. I set up a bunch of shoes on the table and after practicing some contour and blind contour with dry erase markers, we went outside to draw in our sketchbooks with felt tip pens. I had them draw their own shoes outside because the weather was so nice AND because I did not want to smell their feet.
Okay. Seriously. 5th and 6th graders can draw shoes really really well.
I was amazed at how successful they were!! I ended up setting up a little shoe center in my classroom for those that had finished their jerseys to sit at and draw shoes on white paper.
In their sketchbooks, I made them draw with the School Smart waterbase ink/fiber pen.
For some reason, I had ordered several dozen of the 8 color sets. I left out yellow and orange and had red, blue, green purple and brown for students to choose from. This worked out really well....sharpie would've bled through the pages and regular marker wouldn't have had a THIN enough line. Also, since we did not use pencil, they could not erase...which was so magnificent!
For some reason, I had ordered several dozen of the 8 color sets. I left out yellow and orange and had red, blue, green purple and brown for students to choose from. This worked out really well....sharpie would've bled through the pages and regular marker wouldn't have had a THIN enough line. Also, since we did not use pencil, they could not erase...which was so magnificent!
To build their confidence at blind contour without using up a ton of paper, I gave them dry erase markers and dry erase boards. Well technically I only have 20 dry erase board so I had to improvise with some dry erase sleeves. These things are the bomb. Also, I have been saving my lonely socks, you know, the ones from the dryer that have lost their partner. I use those as erasers. Shoes and socks day---OH MY!!
Also, got the idea to suggest adding a crazy sock in their finished drawings from this post. So cute!
Also, got the idea to suggest adding a crazy sock in their finished drawings from this post. So cute!
Students really enjoyed going outside to draw, even if it was only for a little while.
With a couple of classes, we even had time to blind contour draw the bike rack!
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