Washington books

We made George Washington books.

Lincoln Under His Hat Reports

Reports about Lincoln were written and constructed so that the book would be his hat, that would lift up to read.

Panda books

We started with a blank sheet of green paper. Looked at pictures of bamboo and drew bamboo to fill in the entire paper. Then, pandas cut out of black and white paper were added. The contents of the book included:

Chinese name for panda, appearance, habitat, diet, panda babies, etc. National Geoegraphic for kids has great panda pictures and a video that has the sound of a panda cub.

Penguins, Polar Bears Topsy Turvey Books

We made Polar Region books. The first part of the week, we learned about Penguins and conditions in Antarctica. The students drew pictures of penguins on white paper and added more white paint for snow and ice. Fact reports followed. Then we made the center page of the book. It was a world with a penguin on the bottom of the world, on the flip side was a polar bear on top of the world. Next we studied the Arctic and specifically polar bears. We go online and looked at National Geographic for kids and also polar bear expeditions. We made our polar bear covers by painting the Northern Lights and then added polar bear shape cut outs. The book was assembled so that there were 2 front covers. The penguin part was one way and the polar bear part was upside down . This was fun for the kids and a great way to remember that polar bears are North of the Equator and penguins are South.

SnowBalls an art project based on the book by Lois Ehlert

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert inspired my class to create art in her style. I gathered magazines and cut out things that could be used for eyes, noses, mouths, hats, scarves, buttons, and all of the things a snow person needs. We tore three circles out of white paper and glued them on a blue background large on the bottom, medium size in the middle, and the smallest snowball on top. We scavenged through the picture box and old magazines and created our artwork. The writing project was to write directions on how to make a snowman. We took this one step farther in the computer lab and created power point presentations in which the snowballs were actually moved through animation, one on top of the other. If you would like more detailed information on the power point, leave a comment, and I will go into more detail.

January Let it snow, snow snow!

We made snowmen out of empty water bottles. Just take an empty bottle, fill it with something white- shredded paper, tissue paper- (the sparkly kind is really fun), cotton balls, fiberfill pillow stuffing, tissues, Christmas sparkly garland, etc. Add on a head from a styrofoam ball, or paper mache around a small balloon, Decorate with ribbon, fleece and flannel, buttons, pipe cleaners, wiggly eyes, etc. Use the toe or heel of a holiday sock which I got on the after Christmas sales. Earmuffs were also created with thin wire and pom poms. Let your imagination be your guide!

As you can see, this isn't actually a book, but it is the main character of a great snowman story! We wrote snowman adventure stories about our bottle character! The story included a beginning, middle, and end. We illustrated each of those parts, using the snow man bottle character as our drawing model. The books were put together with a cover made out of polka dot scrapbook paper,a drawing of the beginning of the story, the story which was edited and rewritten, a picture to go with the middle of the story, and another picture that iluustratd the end of the story.

Using art motivates the writing! Art is an expression of individual ideas, so the writing just becomes another way for that expression to be showcased.

Native American Books

The covers were made by glueing on suede fringe to brown tagboard. Native American motif ribbon was also added. The content of the book included facts about Native American groups, Picture writing stories and a dictionary, and beads.