Spring Art and Writing in 4th Grade

I love combining art and writing. (The truth is I love having kids make art, but I have a hard time justifying it, unless I attach some academic bit.)

Here is the most recent project that my students did--cherry blossoms with spring writing!

This project started as all good projects do with inspiration--this time it was from Little Notebook. I heart this project of making cherry blossoms with the base of a 2 liter bottle.

Here were the steps:

1. Demo the project to avoid a big mess! This also lets students decide where to place the art and the writing as part of their layout.

2. Use black or brown crayons or markers to make the trunk and branches of a tree.

3. Use pink paint, empty liter containers, and unsharpened pencils to apply paint to the tree branches. (I demonstrated, but the techniques varied as much as my students do!) We had 3 paint stations set up at one big table. That was enough for 24 patient kids.

4. Lots of room is required for drying, unless you have a drying rack. We just place them around the perimeter of the classroom.

5. On another day we journaled about what we like about Spring. (This would be a great place to add some poetry, too!)

6. Students wrote their thoughts in a final copy of the pink paper.

This can be as free form or controlled as you want it to be. This project has gotten lots of positive feedback from other staff members and parents.

What Spring projects do you have brewing?