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.

Wayne Thiebaud Ice Cream Cones

For this lesson the students studied the artist Wayne Thiebaud, who is famous for his paintings of delicious desserts. They also learned how to make different values of their paint color by adding tints and shades. Each child started with a white piece of paper with a cross drawn across it, making 4 sections. I gave each table group a different ice-cream color and then walked around to add white or black at different times and they filled in each section of their paper with a different value that they mixed. After these were dry, each section was cut into an ice-cream scoop shape. Students got to choose a background color and then created a waffle cone from paper. The last step was glueing them on top of their cone with the lightest scoop on top and the darkest on the bottom. A cherry was added for fun :)