Earth Day 2015: Taking care of the Earth's "Boo-Boo's"

Since Earth Day was in the middle of Art Week in our class, I thought I would incorporate a fun art project into our Earth Day lessons.  Besides reading and watching videos to learn about Earth Day, we also made a mini-book, word search, and poster to tell about the different ways we could help the Earth by following the 3 R's: recycle, reduce, and reuse.

The most exciting event however, was an art project where the students used blue and green washable markers to draw and color the Earth on a coffee filter.  After they were finished we took the filters outside and sprayed them with some water, then set them on the drying rack to dry.  The colors of the washable markers ran together when water was introduced, and the result was this beautiful mosaic of what Earth looks like.  We then glued them to a poster that stated simply, "I will help fix the Earth's Boo-Boo's!  We then added a band-aid to the picture (because that's what our parents do for us when we get a boo-boo).  The finished projects were so cute, and the students had a great reminder to take home that each of us have a responsibility to do our part and help the Earth.

Here are a few examples of students with their "Earth Boo-Boo" Art.

Handshake Art: A great way to introduce kids to color mixing!!

We conducted this activity in class during Art Week.  The kids had a lot of fun and we turned our handprints into a nice poster.  Here are a few pics from the event.  They were also showcased on the School's Facebook page!!

Sebastian and Evan show us how Yellow and Red make Orange!

Sydney and Mikaela show us how to mix Blue and Red to make Purple!

Julian and Jaeden show us that Yellow and Blue make Green!

Here are a few other "before" pictures.  They don't look like they enjoyed this at all!!

Here's the poster we made.  It says "The hands that Play together, Learn together".

This week's At-Home Project: Make a Color-Mixing Video

Okay class, it's that time of year again: Art Week!  This week our At-Home Project is to make a Color-Mixing Video to share with the class.  My students did this last year and it was AWESOME!!

(Check out the blog archive for April 11, 2014 to get ideas from my students last year).

Here are some videos from YouTube that might help get your creativity flowing.

Try to do something nobody else has done.  Make it crazy-cool and I will post it on our blog!

 

OK Go! -3 Primary Colors

 

Teaching Video: How to Mix Colors in Water

 

Color Caterpillar: Mixing Colors 

Here are a couple videos that our students made:

 We got a lot of great videos, but I don't have room on here for all of them.

Great job to everyone who participated in the activity.  

Nice creativity and showmanship with your videos!!

Next week will be ART WEEK in Mr. Linnet's Class!

Please send an old shirt to school with your child either Monday or Tuesday for us to use in the classroom with paint.  They will probably get messy, so choose a shirt you might wish to throw away later.  We will begin the week learning about and making a color wheel, then move into mixing primary colors to create secondary colors, and will even try to make a class mural to put up around the school.  I hope to introduce some notable figures to art like Van Gogh and Picasso, and give the kids a chance to show off their artistic abilities throughout the week.  It will be a lot of fun, so if any of you are passionate about art, please use this week to share in the fun with your child!!

-Mr. Linnet

Dino Masks - How many students can you identify??