The kinders are making snakes using oil pastel, watercolor paint and then creating a grass background using paper and soft pastels. We are adding googly eyes to make them extra fun! SSSSSSSSSnakes in the Grass! Last summer, a collaborative artist group, Fortmakers, came to Richmond to complete some cool installations. 
Each year, I return to this lesson because I love the book Tar Beach by Faith Ringold and her beautiful illustrations. I just get such wonderful results from the students, that it is a lesson I want to repeat, like a favorite song. Here are some from a few years back at Artsonia. 
Gyotaku (Japanese 魚拓, from gyo "fish" + taku "rubbing") is the traditional method of Japanese fish printing, dating from the mid-1800s. This form of nature printing may have been used by fishermen to record their catches, but has also become an artform on its own. In the earliest nature prints, inks or pigments were applied directly to the relief surface of leaves and/or other relatively flat natural subjects in order to capture images of their sizes, shapes, surface textures, and delicate vein or scale patterns. Typically both sides of a leaf were coated with ink and the leaf was then placed inside a folded sheet or between two sheets of paper. When rubbed by hand or run through a printing press a mirror image was produced of the topside and underside of the same leaf. Often the prints were done in black ink and the flowers later painted or drawn in by the artist. In other cases a flattened, dried leaf or plant was coated once with black ink and then repeatedly printed in a printing press. The initial dark print was used as a work copy or proof print. The subsequent prints, with fainter traces of ink, were hand colored to more closely resemble the appearance of the real subjects. This methodology is generally applicable to making a print from a fish. They also used wood and carved images into that. 5th graders are acting as architects and designing their dream houses. We brainstormed about magical places and buildings that could exist or maybe just exist in our imaginations and they took off with their sketches, creating cool spaces to live. A history of architecture: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab27 A cool site about architecture for kids: http://www.archkidecture.org/ 
http://www.amazon.com/Draw-House-Colouring-Architectural-Inspiration/dp/0956205372
some examples of architecture: | 
Linwood Holton
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