Elmer's Finished, Second Grade

This Elmer project has taken a long time, but it has covered a lot of art skills. Also we have read many Elmer story books from the series. After oil pastel patterns, the children painted a gray watercolor wash in every other square. All over the room one could hear the mantra "paint one, skip one," as students created a checkerboard of grays. Next they made the jungle for the background. They learned about the word "silhouette". We studied the author illustrator,David McKee's style of wonky jungle plants. I made a handout of some simple ideas as well. The hard part was to limit oneself to the outline only of the tree. On a black silhouette, you cannot see inner details. Finally the children cut out Elmer, and glued him on the back ground piece.