Corduroy Bears

One of my favorite childhood stories was definitely about Corduroy the bear. I was surprised to learn only a few kids recognized the book! Once I read it to them, they loved it as much as I did :) We created our own Corduroy bears showing different kinds of texture. We used gold paint for the bear and green construction paper for the overalls. Each student got a small piece of cardboard to dip into a darker green paint to make a corduroy effect on the overalls. We also used gold oil pastels to add fur around the outside of our bear. Students picked out a color for the background as well as 2 buttons for me to hot glue on their picture. I love the results!

Desert Landscapes

2nd and 3rd graders learned about the artist Sushe Felix and studied her beautiful and colorful landscapes. We also read the book Desert Giant which contained many interesting facts about cactus. The first day of this lesson was spent painting a piece of paper using green and yellow colors. This would be set aside to dry. The second day of this lesson was spent layering strips of bright tissue paper onto another white paper using a glue and water mixture. They could choose any sunset colors they wished. A brown piece was placed near the bottom of the page to represent the desert ground. On the third day we got to bring our desert landscapes to life! We cut 3 different shaped cactus out of our painted paper, glued them onto the background, and then used Sharpie to draw ridge lines and sharp needles along the outline of our cactus. Some students chose to cut cute white flowers from scrap paper to add to their cactus.