Autumn Trees - 3rd & 4th Grade Projects

For the kid's second arts and crafts project, we continued to stay with the tree theme but used a different method.

I found this idea on Pinterest at hello little one. The basic premise is that you have the kids draw a tree shape and then they dot paint them using Q-tips. These are two sample trees I made for them to use as reference material when they were creating their trees. Each child drew their own style of tree and then chose their painting process. The only requirements were that it had to be a tree and they had to do the leaf portion in the dot method. For the trunk, they could either dot paint it or use the Q-tip as a "paintbrush."
Our first class was just the painting of the tree. It is important that the leaf section is painted first saving the trunk for last. This helps avoid the smearing of the tree trunk paint all over the paper.

Here is a picture of the 3rd grade's painted trees (the top 3 trees, against the chalkboard, are my samples): I so love how each tree shows each child's individual personality. Ah, the beauty of art! 

This week I worked with the 4th grade completing their trees by giving them a sky and ground/grass. The requirements for this portion of the project were that the sky needed to be dot painted and the grass brush painted with the Q-tip.

Here are the 4th grade's finished trees: (the tree at the top of the second picture was the sample tree they could reference when competing this portion of the project.)

I was so pleased with their projects!
Once again, their individually shined through. Quite a few of them chose, on their own, to make "patterns" of color in their skies.
Next class we will be making small cornucopias for the Thanksgiving holiday.
As always, thanks for stopping by!