My Hero and Me

It has been a really busy summer here. My boys are out of school and we are in a million directions. I am also teaching a little bit at the OKCMOA over the summer and will be doing some outreach programs. I had a wonderful experience last week through the museum and that was working with children through Hearts for Hearing. They had a camp where campers got to experience many of the cool things downtown OKC has to offer. Their theme was heroes and when they asked me to come up with a project idea I had the perfect thing come to mind.

I actually saw this project done as My Teddy Bear and Me. It was a magazine collage with tempera paint project. I really wish I could remember who did this, if you know please post and I will link. I changed it up a bit but loved the idea! The kids did an excellent job as you can see through the works they completed! These kiddos rocked and I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to meet all of them and work with them. Thank you Hearts for Hearing!

We talked about heroes and named some that are in our lives. They gave me the names of various people, their parents, family, teachers, doctors and more. They had to pick one to get started.

Workstations are prepped and ready to go.



First we used oil pastels to draw our hero on 10x8 paper. We used a heavy white construction paper. We added details and used a watercolor wash over the top. Set these aside to dry. You can use a hairdryer to speed the process along if needed.





Now we get started on our self portrait. We start by tracing our hand on a piece of construction paper that has been folded in half. When cut this will give us two hands.



Now we cut our head and begin with details like eyes, nose, mouth and hair. I had pre-cut shoulders and paper strips for arms.





Assemble self portrait on 12x18 construction paper. Use glue/gluesticks to attach. Arm strips are placed in an upside down "v" and hands are glued to the ends. (that "v" is covered by the hero painting later) When painting is dry it is glued on a piece of 12x9 construction paper to frame it. That is glued on bottom half of portrait. Arms are brought up and fingertips are glued to the painting to "hold" it.

These turned out amazing. I am going to post a ton of pictures. I can't resist sharing the wonderful work they did!

You will need:
-10x8 white construction paper for painting
-Pacon Multi-cultural paper for skintones
-18x12 colored construction paper for background
-12x9 colored construction paper for framing painting
-colored construction paper for body, arms, portrait
-Scissors
-Glue/Gluesticks
-Oil Pastels
-Watercolors/brushes/washout bowl
-Pencil for tracing hands

D is for Dad

Happy Father's Day to you! This is a fun project that can be done with any letter of the alphabet. Yesterday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art I created these fun painted collages with children ages 3-5.

It was all about Dad as we sat down to begin our creations. We started with a basic paint palette and used q-tips for brushes. I did this so we didn't have to worry about washing out our brushes.



I explained that we were not making pictures of things because the painting was going to be cut up and glued into something new. We worked on filling our entire 9x12 sheet of white paper with paint.
I should mention that I drew a capital letter "D" on the back of each of the papers. They painted on the blank side.





When the entire sheet was full of paint we let it dry while we took a walk to visit the gallery.





Back in the classroom we used a glue stick to glue down a solid sheet of 9x12 white paper onto a piece of 11x14 black tag board. If the paintings were not completely dry we used a hair dryer to speed it along.

Now the kids turn their papers over and see the letter D. They cut it out and glue it on the white paper. Then they cut many shapes from the remaining painting and glue them down. This was a lot of fun and will be a great present for anyone!









You will need:
-Tempera paints
-Paint brushes or q-tips
-2 pieces of heavy white 9x12 paper
-1 piece of 11x14 black tag board
-scissors
-Glue stick
-**Prep work: draw a large letter of your choice on the backside of one of the white pieces of paper. Older children can do this themselves.