Easy and Inexpensive projects that bring art to the streets: TP tube Owls

I spent most Thursday evenings this summer working the Westmont Street Fair.  I had the opportunity to teach a fun mini project to lots and lots of kids while promoting my new art studio.

All the projects had to use cheap materials, since I would sometimes have over 200 kids come visit me!

One week we made toilet paper tube owls!  They were so cute!  There are a TON of things you can do with toilet paper tubes.  We also made toilet paper tube maracas.

Did you know you could buy toilet paper tubes?  Ugh, yeah, I saw them at the Hobby Lobby and made my daughter pose with them.  I've been lambasting the very idea of them ever since, but another mom told me it might be handy for those last minute people who haven't been saving them.  I think it would be cheaper to buy the toilet paper.

Awesome Owls, lesson 2 and a change in plans (life on a cart!)

For our third day of Awesome Owls, first graders made a small owl out of Model Magic.  I got the idea from Pinterest!  I thought it would be a nice way to review and reinforce our theme.  First grade would have the chance to learn about and make sculpture, and we got to discuss real vs. implied texture.

When I packed up my cart, I included navy blue 9 x 12" construction paper, yellow squares, and black strips.  The idea was that students would use the navy blue as their placemat, then use it as the background for a constructed home for their clay owl.  I pictured a black tree silhouette and a yellow moon.  I even thought about how I would teach making the tree... V's and Y's..V's & Y's! I wasn't prepared for when I asked the first graders where their owl would live.  First student said a tree, a second said a nest, then they started getting creative. "A house, like a real house with a TV!" "underground!" "my bedroom!"  "a house IN the tree!"  So, I scrapped my step-by-step boring construction of a tree and moon, and let the kids draw whatever kind of habitat they wanted with pencil.  We traced with Sharpie and colored with regular crayons Had I been in my classroom I would of used color sticks, or construction paper crayons, however the regular crayons gave it a nice dark night feeling.  First graders understood that their owls are most active at night.

Awesome Owls! First grade makes patterns, cuts, & pastes cute birds.

Being relegated to a cart this semester, I have had to adjust some of my lessons to accommodate.  Most projects that used to be painted are being finished in new (less messy) ways, and sometimes with surprising results!

The objectives for Awesome Owls are for first graders to learn about line, practice making pattern, cutting, and pasting.  We even get into owls being nocturnal and some of their other habits (for the Common Core aficionados) 

Each student starts off with two papers.  We filled them with lines, and filled our new shapes in with pattern.  As a class we draw our owl shape on the back of one paper (two U's), and our wings on the other (one rainbow).

Here is a weird Microsoft Paint picture of what I mean:

Students are charged with cutting and pasting and assembling.  Even though we couldn't paint, everyone's turned out really cute.