Third Grade Auction Art Project- Wood & Resin Tray with Woodland Animals

I recently shared a post about my third graders painting woodland animals slices of wood that I was going to use for our Auction Art Project for our school's annual Gala.

If you've been waiting for an update - here it is!  

If you prefer your updates in video form...Here it is!

Even before I gave the kids the slices of wood to paint on, I wanted to make sure they would fit in the bottom of the tray.  Once they were painted I laid them back in there to double check.  Wait a minute, I have 15 third graders... uh oh.

Luckily the wooden trays I purchased on Amazon came with multiple sizes, and I must of just selected the wrong one.  After some finagling... they fit!

I used some Minwax 66060000 Gel Stain , quart, Walnut to stain my cheap trays. I knew from the Amazon reviews that they were not going to stain too well, but I wanted them to look a little rustic.

Anyplace where there was glue, the stain would not cover and the cheap wood had a lot of striations that the stain could not penetrate.  Perhaps some prep before staining, like sanding the crevasses or some sort of base coat would be smart.
 

Once the stain dried, I coated the trays in generic Mod-Podge.  Also known as Sargent Art Lamination Glue I tried to use the Mod-Podge, but couldn't get the jar open.  The Sargent Art Lamination Glue doesn't smell as bad.

I also coated the tops of my students' paintings with the clear coat.  You have to make sure you coat the entire surface area of the clear coat, or once you apply the resin it may become discolored. 

I used the Sargent Art Lamination Glue to secure the wood slices to the inside of the tray.  This wasn't a good idea.  Even though I had made sure the wood slices fit before I stained and clear-coated the pieces, I was having a heck of a time getting everything to fit once again.  I kept having to peel pieces up, push them down, pry pieces of bark off... it was a mess and it ruined my manicure.  Oh yeah, and it made the bottom of my tray very bumpy and gluey textured.

The next time I make a wood and resin tray, I will make sure all the Sargent Art Laminating Glue is dry, put the pieces in, and lift them up one at a time and glue them with E6000 or something.

Once everything was secure and dry (the next day) I decided to try my hand at applying a resin coat.  I used EnvirotexLite Pour on Resin This was super easy to use.  I had it in my head that I would have to be mixing and stirring powders together - but it was all liquid.

I poured equal parts of the resin and hardener into party cups.  Mix them into one cup and stir and scrape for 2 minutes. Pour to the other cup - stir for one minute. 

I poured the first coat onto my tray and concentrated on filling the spaces between the wood slices.   Every five minutes or so I would go check on it and pop the air bubbles.  It said in the directions that your breath would pop them - but I used the end of a paintbrush.

I left the tray on my work table to harden.  I was paranoid someone was going to knock it over, put something on it, or somehow let sawdust loose and ruin the whole thing… but it was fine.

24 hours later I mixed and stirred and mix and stirred and applied a second layer of resin.

I really wanted the bottom of the tray to be level and thought I could get away with two coats - but no such luck.

24 hours after that… I applied my third layer.

I knew this had to be the last layer so I really worked on making sure the resin was level.  Once I filled in all the pits and tried to get it as level as possible, I had to let it cure for 72 hours.

FINALLY, it was done. 

Update 4/11/21

Pumpkins in Chalk Pastel Complete Lesson with video, slide show, rubric, directions, & more!

I made this video for the Artsonia After School Art Club!  It's basically everything you need to know for this lesson in under 10 minutes.

My third graders rocked the pastel chalk pumpkins this year.  It is one of those classic lessons that isn't too difficult to get awesome results, but admittedly, sometimes they "get" it and sometimes they don't.

First, before I get into the actual lesson, I want to bring something to the attention of the art teachers out there.  This first pumpkin was outlined with traditional Elmer's Liquid School Glue.

This pumpkin below was outlined with Jot, AKA Dollar Tree glue.

Under normal circumstances, I despise the Jot because of it's glossy, and honestly, not as adherent and liquidy quality, but in this instance it is amazeballs!  I love the way that turned out.  

I have Jot in one of the schools I teach in because the students bring in supplies to donate to the art room and about 2/3rds of the kids purchase the kits where I have dictated the brands etc...and the other 1/3rd bring in rando things.  Sometimes rando things are okay.  They'll bring in amazing artist quality pastels that I would've never asked for, or super nice sketchbooks for their cubby, but sometimes you end up with Jot glue.

Back to chalk pumpkins.  I began this lesson with a slideshow where we discussed still life objects, and what makes up a still life.  I am completely honest about stealing images off the internet for my slideshows for educational purposes.

The second part of the slide show discusses analogous colors, but I usually save that until after the drawing part of our project is done.

I have been using direction pages a lot this year.  They have been great for when kids are not paying attention, kids who need a little extra help, and for the kids who are constantly asking what they are supposed to be doing.  Sorry, this one isn't the best quality.  It was before I learned I had to use a 5B pencil to write it out!  Anyway, the directions page shows the kids how to draw the pumpkin.  I draw with them too.  Like I said, the direction page just help keeps them on track.  It's not a substitute for my teaching.

As they drew the additional objects in their still life, I had little items for them to look at set out around the room.  Some kids did just take ideas from their imaginations though, which I said was OK.  I tried not dissuade them from anything Halloweeny though, simply because our art shows at both schools are in the Spring, and pumpkins will look okay, but jack-o-lanterns will look out of my place in my opinion.

Once we have our still life drawn, I have a video of me adding glue and color to my project.  It is about 5 minutes and gives those visual learners a little extra nudge to see what it is exactly we are going to be doing.


This is the first video I made for this lesson way back in 2018- before my production skills were as refined as they are now. It's shorter than my Artsonia version, but doesn't really give you all the info.  :)


The practice coloring sheet isn't really necessary.  They could just practice on one of the pumpkins they practiced drawing. However; my kids usually practice in their sketchbooks, and it got kind of messy last year.  So, this year they practiced on this pumpkin, but I printed the rubric/assessment page on the back...and well....when I went to grade projects it was also very messy.

Timing wise, this project may have it's issues.  The gluing of the black paper has to be done the week prior to using the pastel - so if you end up with a weird time thing - I sometimes have them put a glue outline on their practice papers too.

Besides the video, I did go step-by-step through their practice page on how to mix the colors.  I walked around as they did the rest to see if there were any major issues.

As mentioned above, I had great success with this project this year!  I hope you do to!  Check out my school Artsonia galleries below.

Holy Trinity School Third Grade

Elm School Third Grade

Family Dinner - Complete Lesson with slideshow, directions, video, rubric, oh my!

For years I have taught the parts of composition to third grade with a lesson I've called "Me in the Art Room".

I mean come on, for third grade, that is some pretty accurate detail of the things happening above my cabinets.

Admittedly, I've gotten kind of sick of it. My team and I have been working on a lot of curriculum lately and someone brought up family portraits.  I remembered an old coworker making these super cute family dinner pictures 10+ years ago. 

I decided to revisit the idea and go overboard with resources.  I started the lesson with a slideshow.

I took the class through a million and twelve examples of families at dinner and had them examine the size of everyone's head, as well as where things were placed.  All of the pictures were stolen from the internet.  The slideshow took us nearly an entire class to get through.

Next, we started our drawings.  I like to put a direction page on each table.  I tell my students that we follow the directions, but our projects do not all end up looking the same.

Once we got a pretty good start on that, up to about heads and shoulders, I showed the the video of me completing the entire drawing portion.  It's kind of time-lapse so it only takes under 2 minutes.

I like to pause it on the last screen and point out a few things about proportion and scale. Plus, how I drew some of the facials features and arms.  I stress that it isn't really about drawing things realistically.

You may have noticed my use of tracers.  I made these tracers ahead of time to distribute to the students.  They are small, medium and large.  This project would work just fine having the kiddos draw their own table, and drawing their own heads.  Definitely. However, with the tracers it 1) has much higher success rate, and 2) it makes the kids really think "Who's head would be big?  Who is in the foreground?  Which one would be the smallest? etc.."  Just drawing them we might not be able to visualize their thought process.  On that note, I had one student who was brand new the day I taught this and he drew the entire family in one straight line exactly the same size. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Once their family has hair, faces, and clothes, I pass out the "What's for Dinner?" page.  I made this brainstorming page because I realized how little kids could remember about what goes on their dinner table!  Or what they ate for dinner the night before!

The next time I saw the students, I wanted to have a little review and pass out their rubrics.  I made up a review page for them to work at with their table-mates.  I drew four family dinner pictures and they had to discuss and write down what they felt was wrong with the pictures.

So, all the people are too small in this one except for the one person.  Who is an adult?  Who is a kid?  Look at how big the furniture is?






This is a common problem for the kiddos.  They want to make the people going AROUND the table.  It has to be nipped in the bud when they are tracing the heads.  Also, it is not a bird's eye view of the table, even though it seems very round.  Keep the plates ovalish.





What is the center of interest here?  The vacuum?  This was brought up in the slideshow.  What the artist wanted to draw your eye to is in in the middle ground with interesting things around it.  Here, the interesting things are spread out.





 No "horizon line to indicate where the floor starts/ends.  Is that a cabinet floating.  That guy isn't even at the table!  There is no sense of composition here!

Then, as a class we went over their rubric.

I emphasized adding a million details while we were still in our drawing phase.

Finally, kids moved on to drawing their backgrounds, tracing with Sharpies, and coloring everything.
The very last day I asked them how they could "take it a step further, and make it even better?" like it says on our rubric in the EXCEEDS column.  I asked them to think about some of the skills we learned with our last project, which happened to be pumpkins fall still life.  They caught on that I was trying to get them to remember mixing analogous colors and adding shadows.  The finished pieces I think families will truly cherish!

Presidential and influential portraits in Lego!

Third grade is one of those transition years and one I find the most difficult to teach.  In my district, third graders start at a new school. We have k-2 in one building, and 3-5 at a second.  It is great for me as far as travel and planning.  I even see the same kids k-5th grade.  But still, third grade is a challenge.

Each year it seems I hit a point where I need to completely reinvent the wheel.  Other projects maybe haven't been as successful, or I am seeing more and more boredom and restlessness in the art room.  I try to really think of something that the kids are into so they will be excited and stay engaged.   Last year I tried Mine Craft  perspective pictures... All I heard about in art class constantly was Mine Craft, Mine Craft, Mine Craft... but it bombed.  This year, I've been hearing about Legos for weeks.  I've even had to confiscate Legos, so I figured it was having a surge in popularity.  I decided Lego Portraits might be the way to go... and it worked!!

It was right around Presidents Day.  We began this lesson by going through a slideshow that discussed the holiday.  I also included this great video presented by The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.  My students got way into it.  They wanted to keep talking about the people who were featured in the video and the stories they knew about them.  We also attempted a tour of the National Portrait Gallery via Google Art Project.  This is sooooooo coool but sooooo not conducive to the classroom.  Has anyone had luck with this?  It was still kind of neato and gave the kids the general idea.

As the slideshow continues, it asks why some of those people were included in the Portrait Gallery.  This got students thinking about why they were important.  Coincidentally, It is also Black History Month and much of what they were learning about in class meshed with some of the people featured in the video.

Next, I passed out the Lego Portrait Worksheet.  Students filled out the top portion independently.  Even though the worksheet is pretty general, I asked my third graders to think of a Lego Mini Figure they might see in the National Portrait Gallery.  The second part of the slideshow focuses on artist who created historical minifigures and shows some famous portraits in Lego form.  Their portrait didn't have to be someone like Rosa Parks, it could be someone else who is heroic, or famous,  real or not.  (I used the images on the worksheet after a Google search, so I am not exactly sure of the origin of the blank mini-figure.  I would like to have a better photo of the formal mini-figures too that included recognizable females.)

After students practiced, we drew as large as we could on a yellow 9 x 12 piece of paper.  We outlined with Sharpie and colored with crayons.

Wee made our portraits look a little more presidential by adding a frame that decorated in a radial pattern.  They used this worksheet to guide them.

Watercolor Heaven! That brief moment when everyone is painting and everything is perfect.

I've mentioned before how 3rd grade is often a challenge for me.  I finally got up my nerve to  watercolor paint with them, and it was everything I ever imagined it would be.

We have been learning about implied texture and making awesome alien portraits.  We drew an imagined formal alien portrait and added implied texture.  We traced in crayon and were planning a wax resist painting.

My class right after lunch was a disaster.  It took us forever to get supplies.  Several students did not follow set up directions.  Several students were not listening to instructions.  Several students ended up not able to paint.

We never got to watercolor heaven in that class.

I was already super cranky when my end of the day class came in.  I went through my same spiel.  We set up, we listened to directions, we got supplies.  And then it happened.

Watercolor heaven.

The room was silent except for the occasional excitement when the water changed color, or when they started to paint over their white stars and saw them magically appear.  I circled the room and everyone was on task.  Colors were translucent, brushes were in a point!  No one's brush was having a bad hair day, or scrubbing holes in the paper.  No one was using tissue to clean up spills and no one was wiping their brush on their smock.

Watercolor heaven t'was just a fleeting moment though.  Soon someone needed clean water, and another table spilled.  Two kids ran out of yellow, and another reallllllllly had to go to the bathroom.  One kid was done, another stuck their fingers in the paint, and of course one kid splattered water at their tablemates.

The hustle and bustle of cleaning up began.  The rest of the hour was a blur, but when their classroom teacher asked how they did, all I could remember was watercolor heaven.  "They were WONDERFUL!!  They did such a great job today!!"

Free downloadable worksheet/handout on designing a radially symmetrical frame. A math and art integration!

I created this handy little worksheet to aid my third graders in designing a frame with radial design.  The outside edges of their design will be the same in all four quadrants to make a frame.

I took these images off of a Google search.

Chicago Cityscapes - Third Grade lesson plan

Supplies
•cool colored construction paper, 12 x16, 12 x 14, 12 x 6
•dark or black construction paper 12 x 18
•pencils
•erasers
•scissors
•glue
•silver Sharpie markers
•color sticks

Which overused moniker can I start this article with?  My kind of town?  That toddlin’ town?  The Windy City, the Second City? They do all fit the beautiful city of Chicago.  It so happens that I have the pleasure of teaching just eight miles or so west of the City with Big Shoulders.  Even though on a clear day we can see The Willis Tower - formally the Sears Tower just down the street from our school many of my students are not very familiar with the architectural history of Chicago.  In fact they know little about the city at all.  Many students do not even realize how close to the city we actually are.

I like to begin this lesson by showing a bunch of different photographs of unique buildings and landmarks in Chicago.  I purposely choose buildings and sculptures that I know the students have seen before or have an fascinating story behind them.  The buildings are not always the most interesting architecturally.  One objective is for the student to be able to name buildings they otherwise never thought of.  I secretly hope that one day they are on their way to a Cubs game when they call out from the back seat “Hey!  That’s the Harold Washington Library!  We learned about that in Art Class!” 

While looking at the photographs we discuss some architectural characteristics.  We talk about the height of the skyscrapers and the differences between the 100 year old buildings and the modern buildings.  We also talk briefly about the ornamentation and we even discuss buildings that are currently being built.

We begin the art production portion of this lesson by reviewing our parts of composition.  I explain to the class that our cityscape is going to be broken down into three parts; a background, middle ground and foreground.  We begin with the background.  Each student is asked to draw four recognizable buildings from the city of Chicago on a 12” x 16” piece of blue construction paper.  Usually we draw small things in the background, because they are so far away, but I explain to the class that with our cityscape we are going to draw the largest items in the background because they will appear small.  Students are able to look at photographs of the Chicago buildings for reference as they draw.  Those drawings are then traced with black or silver permanent marker and colored with color sticks.

Next, we start our middle ground. Each student receives a slightly smaller piece of violet paper, 12” x 14”.  They are then asked to choose four more recognizable buildings from the city of Chicago.  These buildings shouldn’t be skyscrapers but rather medium in size.  Theaters, Sports Stadiums and smaller Students once again trace with marker and color.  I encourage the students to use bright “crazy” colors and not get hung up on making the cityscapes colors look real.

Now students are ready for the foreground.  These objects are closest to the viewer and appear large.  However, for this lesson in reality they are the smaller things found around the city. Students receive a 12” x 6” piece of green construction paper and they need to draw four recognizable buildings or landmarks found in Chicago.  There are so many wonderful small landmarks, outside statues and parks, I must admit the foreground is my favorite part!  Once the foreground is colored we get out the silver permanent markers and add a little shine to our layers.

Finally, we are ready to assemble each piece.  Students will very carefully cut out their buildings and then glue their layers to a 12” x 18” piece of black construction paper.  Starting with their blue background, violet middle ground, then green foreground.

I know not all cities have an exciting architectural birth like a ravenous fire that engulfed nearly every single building in the 1870s.  Started by a cow no less!  But all cities have buildings and landmarks that have an interesting story behind them or are recognizable easily by the students.  I figure that is how this lesson is adaptable for classes anywhere learning about cityscapes and tying in local architecture. 

I have taught this lesson for many years and it remains a staple  or a favorite.  Students always have great success and are surprised at how well they can draw the buildings.

Here are some artsonia galleries from previous years:
http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=579714
http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=518715
http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=338783
http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=291168