Clay- Frog and Lilypad

 Description:  For this activity, we used clay to create a frog and lilypad.  We started with rolling out our clay, and we did this by taking two boards and leveling out the lilypad.  We then cut out our lilypad and put that aside while we worked on the frog.  For the frog, we rolled out the clay again and created our frog body, eyes, arms, and feet.  We put him together how we thought would look good and then we scratched on the clay where we wanted it to be stuck and then put water on those scratch marks and it acted as glue.  Once our frog was assembled, we scratched out where his toes were, and added eyes, a mouth, and a nose.

Activity:  I think that a fun extension activity using clay would be to make a holiday tic-tac-toe board.  The other class has done this and I think that it would be so fun.  They created different holiday boards with clay and then made clay pieces.  One that I saw that I really liked was a hot chocolate cup as the board and then had peppermints and marshmallows as the X's and O's.

Print making- Skyline

 Description:  For this activity, we started by making our skyline with watercolor.  We were able to create our skyline in the way that we wanted to.  We then set that aside to dry and continued with our printmaking.  We used our pencil on a piece of paper to create three objects that we wanted to include.  We traced them onto our foam printmaking paper and outlined them to make sure that all of the lines were able to be seen.  After, we then covered the paper with black ink and rolled over the top of it to create those lines that we had outlined before.  Unfortunately, mine did not turn out as well as I had hoped so my example sheet is over the top of the skyline and you cannot see the skyline through the lines.

Activity:  An extension activity that I think would be fun is to have students create their own scratch art. They can create their background and have their lines detailed out, but I think adding the scratch-off paint on top instead of black paint would make this really cool, and they can scratch the three structures to still get the affect of it.

Recycled Earth Model

 Description:  For this activity, we started with a recycled circle from either a cereal box or a pop box and then outlined our continents.  We then glued on the reused blue paper and created our ocean.  We then balled up green tissue paper and created our continents.  Lastly, we added some clouds made of cotton balls.

Activity:  This activity was very fun and useful because all of the materials that we used were recycled.  An extension activity that I would do would be to create something similar but have the students see if they can find any objects around the house that they want to recycle and add to their art piece.  I think that would be cool because the students would really be recycling because they are using objects that they found at home to create their own art pieces.  

Painting- Underwater Ocean Life

 Description:  For this painting activity, we created an underwater ocean life scene with watercolor, crayons, salt, and saran wrap.  We started by trying 4 different techniques for using the watercolor.  Those techniques were salt, saran wrap, wet on wet, and crayon.  Using those techniques, we were able to create the underwater ocean habitat.  We made sure to start by using all of our dry materials first and then adding the watercolor.

Activity:  An extension activity I would do for this would be to incorporate different sea life animals.  So the students would have the bottom of the ocean where you can find the coral, snails, and starfish, and then have the ocean where you would find most of your sea animals, and lastly create at the top what animals would be at the top of the oceans such as ducks or fish.

Drawing- Pumpkin

 Description: For this drawing activity, we made a pumpkin using oil pastel and black marker.  We started by practicing on another piece of paper to create our pumpkin, once we had an idea of how we wanted to draw our pumpkin, we started to draw it on our black piece of paper.  We drew out a pumpkin in pencil and outlined it in black marker, we then drew out the moon and added a grassy patch. We first started with our light colors for the moon and pumpkin and shaded the bottom left of the pumpkin to create a shadow.  We then colored our sky, added stars, and colored our grassy area.  Lastly, we put glue over our black marker lines to really bring out the lines.

Activity:  For an extension activity, I would have the students create a pumpkin patch.  I think that it would be really cool for the students to create more than one pumpkin and almost have it as if it was a pumpkin patch.  They could make different sizes and colored pumpkins because as we know, not all pumpkins are the same.

Hidden Safari

 Description:  For this activity, we chose a safari animal that we wanted to draw.  On a piece of white paper, we drew our animal upside down.  When we drew the animal upside down it really had us focus on all of the details of the animal.  After we had our animal drawn out, we took warm colors and created a design to go over the top of our animal.  When we look at the animal with the red see-through glasses, we can then see the animal that we created.

Activity:  For an extension activity, I would have students create a safari of multiple animals.  They would choose at lease 4 safari animals to include in their picture and then we would have a challenge to see which students can find the most of each student's piece.  This would be really fun because the students will be able to create their own safari but then also have a challenge to see if they can find their classmate's safari animals in their creation aswell.

Van Gogh

 Description: This is an art piece that we made based on Van Gogh's work.  We created our interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh's painting of Starry Night in tissue paper and oil pastels.  I decided that I wanted to make a volcano collage.  We first started by creating our background with tissue paper to create a cityscape collage. Once that was dry, I cut out black paper into mountain-like figures and glued those on.  The last thing that we did was add on oil pastel and I used the oil pastel to create lava coming out of the volcanoes and smoke coming out of the top of the volcano.

Activity:  An extension activity that I would do is to have students create their own version of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.  They will learn the history of his creation and a little about him and then create what they see when they look outside at night time.  They will be able to create what they get to see when they look outside at night time to create a realistic collage.