Friday, December 18, 2015

1st-Scarecrows

1st Grade: Scarecrows

First Graders created some scarecrows recently for the fall season. There was a lot of mixed media going on with this project. We first looked at some photos of scarecrows. We made lots of observations and discussed. I asked students: Why are scarecrows made? How are they made? Do you think they do a good job? I had lots of great answers! We concluded that scarecrows are very important to farmers, they are made with old clothes and usually do a good job!

For this project, students traced a circle for the head to begin. This was done on 12 x 18 white 80 lb paper. I had them trace near the top (but not the very top). We did step by step for the rest of the scarecrow-hat, body, limbs. I did a "girl outfit" and "boy outfit" (dress/overalls) to give students some choices. (Or they could create their own.) I reminded students to not draw hands/feet, as that would be represented with the raffia (aka straw). Students traced the scarecrow with black sharpie, and added oil pastel to the "pockets". I also had them trace the mouth, nose, cheeks with oil pastel if they wanted those to be colorful. However, they can be left in just the black sharpie. 
Next day, students painted scarecrows with liquid watercolor (free color choice). Students also began the background. I had students draw a "rainbow line" across a 12 x 18 colored paper (paper is vertical format). This helped students line up the colored craft sticks to create a fence. Even with this, gluing craft sticks vertically is hard for some students. I reminded them to leave a large gap between the 2nd and 3rd sticks. (Where the scarecrow will be glued down). Also, I limited them to an "abab" color pattern for the fence. When scarecrows were dry, they were cut out and glued on the background.  Pumpkins were added with oil pastels (or whatever vegetable they wanted-I encouraged pumpkins, because they are easy to draw and easy to see!)

I did a step by step of how to draw a crow also. Next day was "mixed media day". Students glued on: a piece of burlap, pieces of fabric, pieces of suade/leather, a button, and crimped pre-cut pieces of grass. I found out quick that they smaller pieces looked much better, so I encouraged and helped students cut down the fabric into 1/2 in. pieces. This way, the scarecrow was not covered up completely with just 2 pieces of fabric. 
Last step was gluing down all that straw aka raffia! Wow, talk about messy, but fun! This was a great tactile project for young learners. Also, used a bit of math (I'd wrote down a list of the different items to be glued on with the quantity of each). Students had to follow the correct quantity.

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