Art Room Lion

To keep with the theme of lions and OGPS's PRIDE values, 6th grade student embarked on watercolor and drawing adventure.  Students watched this Library Lion video to discuss characteristics of the Lion and what made him such a role model.  We then pretended that there was a Lion in the Art Room!  What sort of behaviors and rules must that Lion follow in order to be a stellar artist?

The first fews days of this project were devoted to drawing the art room.  I gave students a simple perspective lesson where they drew three lines, one to divide the walls and two more for the area of the floor.  Since my classroom is tiled, I demonstrated how to draw the diagonals needed to represent the perspective for the tiling.  The kids really took to this lesson and some were even able to transfer this concept into their drawings of details on the walls.  From there, I asked students to choose elements from the art room to fill in their drawings.  They didn't have to match the walls exactly, rather, take pieces of the room that they liked and combine them.  When their drawings were complete, they traced over their work in black Sharpie.  They then used water color crayons to color in their pictures.  Since so many of my students paid close attention to details, I figured a traditional watercolor set would be too challenging to work with.  The watercolor crayons were perfect!

The final component to this artwork was adding the lion.  I just love how students placed their lion in the art room.  Some lions appear to be entering the room, while others are curled up on the meeting rug for a nap.  To accompany their artwork, I asked students to write a paragraph: How is your art room lion is a great ARTIST?  They had to reflect upon the core OGPS values and those that they are expected to follow while in the art room.

The final products really came out spectacular!