'He is Risen' Easter Canvas

Most of the deRosier Easter decorations are rabbit-themed. No surprise, as most of our everyday decorations are also rabbit-themed. I decided to make a canvas to display amongst all the rabbits to help us remember the true meaning of Easter. Affiliate links below. 

'He is Risen' Easter Canvas

Materials:

• canvas board
• white gesso
• Faber-Castell Gelatos
• letter stickers
• black Sharpie
• paper trimmer
• black cardstock
• craft glue

Steps:

Prep the canvas with gesso. When it is dry, use the yellow, orange and red Gelatos to create a sunrise background on the canvas. 

Add letter stickers to the top of the canvas. Use the Sharpie to blacken the bottom edge.

Cut a piece of cardstock to the width of the canvas, then tear a hill shape. Glue it to the bottom of the canvas. Cut a narrow strip of black, then trim it to make two parts, one a little more than twice as long as the other. 

Glue the strips to make a cross on top of the hill. 

Jesus is Risen! He is risen indeed, hallelujah!

Boston Tea Party Drawing

The fifth graders made boycott posters after we studied the various taxes Parliament levied on the American colonists. For our next session together, I did a draw-along as I taught them about the Boston Tea Party.

I drew on the white board and obviously wasn't able to photograph myself as I was teaching, but I did take pictures as I made my sample drawing. 

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Boston Tea Party Drawing

Materials: 

• white drawing paper
• colored pencils

Steps:

Orient your paper horizontally (landscape). With a brown colored pencil, draw the top portion of five rectangular prisms in the middle third of the paper. (I use geometry terms, like rectangular prism, when teaching directed drawings to reenforce what they are studying in math. This lesson integrates math, social studies and art with listening skills.)

Use red and blue pencils to draw the British flag on the front face of each prism. 

With a black pencil, add the word TEA and the logo of the British East India Company on the short faces of the rectangular prisms. Use the brown pencil to shade in the prisms to look like wooden crates.

Use a blue pencil to make short, horizontal strokes around the boxes to mimic water.

Use different blues and purples to fill in the water. Use greys and blacks to make shadows immediately below each of the prisms. 

Add "Boston: December 16, 1773" and "No taxation without representation!" to the poster. 

When our posters were done, we drank Liberty Tea (made with local fruits, herbs, etc) instead of British black tea. 

I always tell my students that studying history is a bit like reading a mystery book when you already know how it's going to end. They know that the American colonists are going to declare independence and that the United States will win the war against England, but how they accomplish that exceedingly unlikely result is fascinating. It's fun to help the students put the pieces together of what they already know with the who, what, when, where, why and how our country came to be. 

Next time, the Declaration of Independence!

Salt Dough Fox Magnet

Here's a simple salt dough project. This fox makes such a fun refrigerator magnet.

Salt Dough Fox Magnet 

Materials:

• salt dough (2 parts flour, 1 part salt, 1 part water)
• rolling pin
• star cookie cutter
• brown felt-tip pen
• craft glue
• googly eyes
• black Sharpie
• rhinestone
• magnet

Steps:

1. Roll out the salt dough. 
2. Cut a star shape and set it aside for several days until it is completely dry.
3. Use the brown pen to color the fox's face. Use the photo as a guide.
4. Glue the googly eyes in place.
5. Color the rhinestone with the black Sharpie. When it is dry, glue it in place.
6. Attach the magnet to the back of the fox.

Sticker Name Art

One way to stretch your creativity is by looking at things in an unexpected way. We're used to looking at the subject of a sticker, but if you ignore the design and focus just on the shape, you can use stickers to make some pretty cool name art.

It's challenging at first. Your eye wants to see the sticker oriented correctly. It wants to notice the subject and not the shape. But once you start seeing shapes in stickers, it gets easier and easier.

There aren't any rules with this project. If you want to use a mix of capitals and lowercase letters, so be it. If you use the same sticker twice for repeated letters in your name, that's fine. It's all good.

Give it a try! And if you do, send me a photo. I'd love to see your name in stickers!

Colonial Boycott Posters

I'm continuing to have a blast teaching US history in Trevor's fifth grade class. We're currently studying the events that led up to the American Revolution. After a discussion about the colonists' loyalties and ties to Britain, we enjoyed black tea with sugar and a snack of bread and homemade butter. We watched a video about the French and Indian War and learned that the British taxed the colonists to pay for the war debt. Like many of the colonists at the time, many of the students felt that it was unfair for Parliament to tax the colonists who did not have representation there. 

We learned about the Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty who organized boycotts against the British goods in protest of the taxes. We looked at examples of modern-day boycott posters and observed that many boycott posters feature large print, capital letters, the colors red and black, skulls, and catchy slogans, and that almost all are vertical. That became our inspiration for posters that the colonists would have made to spread the word about their boycotts. Here are a few of my favorites, starting with Trevor's:

Better not get used to that British tea... major changes are ahead for the American colonists of the 1770s!