Fourth Grade
watercolor landscape collage
auction project 2022
For this year’s auction project, students were inspired by our Western North Carolina mountain landscapes. Each group voted on a landscape they would like to recreate using watercolor and collage techniques. The students learned five common watercolor techniques to begin the process. Next, the students joined teams based on the parts of a landscape: sky, ground, trees, mountains, and rocks. Each team used their favorite watercolor technique to paint their part of the landscape. For example, the sky team painted colors that you would find in the sky. Finally, the teams worked together and used their decorated paper to form a collage. When a collage came together, the students immediately realized that their part had a powerful impact on the larger work. Each student felt a sense of accomplishment and joy at seeing their hard work pay off.
The fourth grade students collaborated to create the work above for our school auction in April of 2017. The students drew painted watercolor paper in various colors and designs. Then, they used butterfly templates to draw and cutout their butterflies. Then, they painted the small blue canvases and glued the book pages on top when they were dry. Lastly, all the canvases were arranged and glued to the large blue canvas along with the butterflies and purple decals to complete the work.
3-D Radial Symmetry Relief Sculpture
This project is great for incorporating origami into relief sculpture, and my fourth grade boys and girls enjoyed the project. To start this project, we began by talking about radial symmetry which means that there is more than one line of symmetry. We did this by analyzing the radius of a circle. Then we talked about what three-dimensional or what a relief sculpture means. A relief sculpture is a piece of artwork that has depth on the surface but is not meant to be seen from all sides. We started building our designs by folding two inch square pieces of paper into three different types of folds: the hat fold, the kite fold, and the samurai fold. Afterwards, we laid out our designs on our black paper and glued down the pieces to make our own radial relief sculptures. The project took about two weeks considering that the students met for class three times each week.
Mrs. Jackson's Art Room has a video for going through the steps of the project.
Her website is mrsjacksonartbd.weebly.com/art-room-blog/category/fourth%20grade.
I also used this resource: www.artwithmrsnguyen.com/2014/05/radial-paper-relief-sculptures-4th5th.html.
Mrs. Jackson's Art Room has a video for going through the steps of the project.
Her website is mrsjacksonartbd.weebly.com/art-room-blog/category/fourth%20grade.
I also used this resource: www.artwithmrsnguyen.com/2014/05/radial-paper-relief-sculptures-4th5th.html.
Name Kaleidoscopes
This is an activity that is typically done at the beginning of the year. The students are given a 10 x 10 sheet of paper. It is folded in half twice. The name is then copied over four times then colored in with markers. Hint: The students that write their names in cursive usually make better kaleidoscopes. |
Mythical Creatures
Fourth grade studies the Middle Ages each year. These works of art are mythical creatures with decorated margins like an illuminated manuscript.
Leaf Collage on Vellum
This project came from Angela Anderson's Layered Vellum Leaf Rubbing blog in November 2013. I just love her website/blog. She has great ideas for the classroom. Our project was slightly different, but I think it's nice to have your own spin on an idea. First, the students collected leaves. Then, we did leaf rubbings with colored pencils on the first sheet of vellum (that worked well). Next, we made prints with foam leaves using tempera paint on the second piece of vellum. The two sheets of vellum were attached with scotch tape and were framed. I thought the effect was nice when we displayed them at our art show in mid October and the light shown through the back of the work and created a stain glass effect. Nice work fourth grade!