Chameleons ARE Cool!

Inspiration for this lesson comes from  Deep Space Nine's Chameleon lesson.

We started Sm'Arties lesson this week in a reading circle.  Chameleons are Cool, by Martin Jenkins, has colorful, happy illustrations by Sue Shields.  I read this to the Sm'Arties, pointing out the pictures. Lest they think the colors in the pictures were exaggerated, I showed them Chameleon, Chameleon, by Joy Cowley with photographs by Nic Bishop. 

We drew the chameleons in pencil first.   I gave the children templates of the chameleon body to help with the step of sizing him big enough on the page, and to give us equal starting points.  Then we added the head features, including the characteristic down-turned mouth, the curling tail, feet, and ridges.  Limbs to hang onto completed our pictures, which, in spite of starting the same, were unique. 

We left the moms inside tracing our pictures with Sharpies (this also speeds things up).  Outside in the beautiful central Florida sunshine, we painted on little squares of paper to demonstrate wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry, salt sprinkle, and alcohol spray techniques.  Then we tried to catch papers as they blew away.

It was time to paint chameleons.  On the advice of the wonderful art teachers who post such beautiful lessons, I bought some watercolor tubes - I love them!  This is much easier than trying to liquefy the cakes of watercolor. 

 Another windy gust!  Catch everything!

We used wet-on-wet technique for the stripes, and wet-on-dry for the little stripes on the eyes.  The children got to order the special effects:  "I'll have alcohol spray and red paint splatters,"  or, ""I want alcohol sprinkle and salt sprinkle." 

 I took Ms. Patty's advice advice to keep the background simple, and just had the children add smeary backgrounds.

Here are some really cool chameleons.

Fabric Art Homework

I love what the children did with our orange paper-reptile-fabric assignment!   

 

 Camo makes a great addition to the little fabric stash I gave them.

 

 Look at the layering!

Good job, Sm'Arties!

Lizards are Still Leapin'

I've looked forward to working with fabric with our Sm'Arties.  This week we did it!  I printed out some lizard clipart so we could cut out 2 fabric lizards.  Peg and I cut out all the brownish lizards - that fabric was slippery, and cutting around the little wiggly reptiles just takes time. 

I showed the children my finished piece, and encouraged them to feel of the texture.  Since one fabric had a suede-y nap, the piece is fairly textural.  The green lizard got his little beady eyes rubbed off.

Then I gave each child a rectangle of fabric and talked about how working with fabric differs from working with paper.  We tried pulling the fabric north-south, then east-west, then diagonally.  They could feel how this non-stretchy fabric still stretches on the bias (diagonal).  When you lay it on paper and move it around, it can stretch and become distorted.  We also talked about how wet glue will seep right through the fabric more than it does on the paper we usually use, and I looked daggers at them.  As a result, we had to push them to use more glue :)

I showed the children how to pin the their patterns onto the fabric, a little manual skill I thought might come in handy someday.  Then they cut out the green lizards, with lots of help from moms due to the lack of really good-cutting scissors (result of sending an email out at 10:00 Sunday night for a Monday morning class.)

Then we arranged the little lizards on orange cardstock, one head facing up and one head facing down, and glued them down using regular gel glue and paintbrushes.  They were cute just like that, but we were not finished.

Each lizard got a little stripe of another fabric to glue down his backbone, and 2 little gold beads for eyes.   The beads were on a bead strand, and each child got a 2-bead piece, which we did not cut apart - they were already spaced just fine for this project. (Note - I did not want to use googly eyes.  I think the little beads looked more artsy).

We scribbled around the lizards so they would stand out from the picture.   The students had a hard time just scribbling - they wanted to outline neatly!   I introduced the children to Crayola Slick Sticks.  The Sm'Arties loved them as much as I do.  They feel like something between a soft oil pastel and a marker, and color beautifully.  (I saw one review of these that compared them to lipstick in texture and coloring.  I agree.  Then the reviewer said how much she disliked them and gave them only 2 stars, saying that her 2-year-old loved them but she - Mom - hated them.  A 2-year-old?  Come on!  The Sm'Arties, 2nd-5th graders, give them a big thumbs-up.)

 

 

We also added a few hightlights to the lizard bodies, and drew a border.  All the borders were a little different.

The 12-pack of Slick sticks includes white, gold, and silver crayons.  They really make nice highlights on fabric.

We love how they turned out! 

Each child has a little bag of fabric scraps, including a few beads, and a homework assignment - to bring me back one or more pieces of reptile artwork.  Earthgirl is working on hers this afternoon.  I can hardly wait to see how they all turn out.

Leapin' Lizards!!!...

...the Sm'Arties are back!...

...and they are drawing and coloring Reptiles!!

Let's warm up by drawing a snake.

Now for something harder:

Can we draw like Mark Kistler?

I think so!

Lunging Lizard!

Get out your black construction paper, your pencils and oil pastels,

...decide what  part of the snake is on top...

...use lots of bright colors...

...and patterns of circles, dots, and lines...

This project inspired by Art Projects for Kids' Aboriginal Snake.