Henri Rousseau - Rainforest Collages

 

 

The Great Kapok Tree has been the class text for my year 5 and 6 classes. This was such a great theme for the term I took the opportunity to link it with a bit of artist appreciation. I introduced the children to the work of Henri Rousseau through a Power Point. We looked at the way Henri Rousseau positioned his focal points within his paintings and looked at how the golden rule of thirds can help you arrange a good composition.

In the first session, the children were asked to choose two animals from the Great Kapok Tree story to include in the work. They then used oil pastels to draw their animals. I encourage them to draw the outlines in black so the animals would stand out in the finished pieces.

During the second week, the children cut their oil pastel animals out and arranged them on a larger sheet of green sugar paper. The children divided up the paper into thirds vertically and horizontally to create 9 squares on their page. The children then went about arranging their oil pastel animals in the four corners of the centre square. Once they were happy with the composition, they used coloured paper and textures card to collage around their animals using an overlay technique.

The collage stage was a great chance for me to give the children a free range. It was wonderful to see the children try to tell a story within their work.

Farmyard Animal Art Projects

With sprint in full swing, this term has been focused on plants and animals. My year 1 and 2 classes have been looking at the class text Farmer Duck. The story follows poor duck who has to do all the work around the farm while the greedy fat farmer sits in bed all day eating chocolate.

I decided to combined different techniques and media to create the different farm animals from the story.

Week 1, we collaged using feathers, practising laying them in the same direction. This activity seems simple but shows the children that not all collaging involves using paper.

Week 2, we concentrated on developing the printing technique. The children mixed water, washing up liquid and black paint in a bowl. Next, they used straws to blow bubbles (careful not to suck up the mixture). Once the bubble were high enough, they lay their sheets of paper on top of the bubbles. Once dry, the children cut out a cloud shape for a sheep's body and added legs and a head. We finished our sheep with google eye stickers but drawing eyes could extend the project.

 

Week 3 was the week of the chicken. The children had to fold their paper plate in half to create a chicken's body. This was a great opportunity to talk a little about maths and how two halves have to be equal or there not really a half. The children then added detail by cutting shapes from coloured paper. The children discussed the types of shapes they were drawing. It was fantastic to hear the children discuss the difference from geometric shapes to organic shapes that we had covered in a previous lesson. When I first introduced the vocabulary, I was concerned that the children may be to young but the risk paid off. 

Again we finished the project with some googly eye stickers. 

 

 

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