Birthday calendar in one color

You need:

1. drawing sheet
2. tempera paint
3. ruler
4. pencil
5. black marker

Draw with pencil a geometric shape in the middle of the sheet. Draw horizontal and vertical lines to divide the background in rectangles. Do the same within the shape. Paint the rectangles in values of one color, using a basic color + black and white. Start with the lightest color. 

Outline all shapes with black marker.

Elements of art: color, line, shape, value 

Happy new year!

Made by students of grade 6

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A3 size
2. water paint color
3. brushes
4. liquid water color paint
5. crayons

Draw some Dutch canal houses and color them with water color paint. Use crayons to draw fireworks. Then paint the sky dark blue with liquid water color leaving  the edges white. 

Happy new year

Made by students of grade 3 and 4 

You need: 

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. blue liquid water colour paint 
3. brush
4. crayons
5. black and yellow or orange construction paper
6. yellow chalk pastel

Show pictures or movies about fireworks and discuss what this looks like. Use crayons to draw fireworks on a white sheet. Paint this with blue liquid water colour paint. Let dry.

Cut a skyline out of half a sheet of black paper. Paste this on the blue sheet. Cut windows from yellow or orange paper.
Draw a yellow chalk line on the roofs and smudge it.   

Artist Trading Cards

Some weeks before Christmas, I was contacted by Amy Baldwin, art teacher at St. Pauls Lutheran School in Millington (Michigan). She wrote me she was a fan of my weblog. We emailed for a while, wondering if we could do a little project together. I read about exchanging ATC's on many art blogs, so I proposed to let our students make those little cards for eachother. This seemed to her very nice, so we got started!

Amy's students made ATC's for my students, my Dutch students did the same for hers. A couple of days before Christmas I sent an envelope filled with 50 ATC's of my 23 students to Millington.

Yesterday we received the big envelope, full of ATC's! How exciting for my students to get those beautiful cards from the other side of the world! They admired the cards and were surprised about the Dutch words on some of them. Thank you very much Amy and thank you all, St. Paul's students!

Design your own clock!

You need:

1. plywood plate
2. coping saw
3. sandpaper
4. carbon paper
5. pencil
6. clock
7. tempera paint
8. brush
9. things to symbolize figures
10. picture hook

Children first make a design for their clock on paper. With carbon paper this design has to be copied on the jigsaw. Saw the clock and sand it smooth. Don't forget the edges. Paint the clock with tempera. Paste figures or other things to symbolize the figures on your clock. Fix a hook on the backside and hang your clock.

All clocks are made by students of 11-12 years old.

Thanks to Ton Sommers.

Splattering fireworks

You need:

1. black construction paper
2. toothbrush
3. tempera paint
4. spoon
5. straw
6. photo of a building or skyline
7. scissors

Choose an internet photograph of a famous building or skyline. Print it and cut it out carefully. Put the picture or a black sheet of paper. Dilute white tempera paint with water so it is fluid. Dip the toothbrush in the paint and knock the adhering drops off. Take a teaspoon in your writing hand and the toothbrush in the other. Scrape with the spoon on the hairs of the toothbrush in your own direction. This way the hairs of the toothbrush will spring back, while they release splashes of paint. Practice this first on a scrap sheet. Now splash around your image. Near the image you splash closer, further away you splash thinner.

When you are finished, gently take the image away. You'll see the silhouette of the building.Let your work dry before you do the second step. Dilute some tempera paint on a saucer with water so it is thinner. Leave one or two drops of diluted tempera on your artwork, but not on the silhouette. drupjes verf op je werkstuk vallen, maar niet op het silhouet (put your image back to the sheet if necessary). Blow through the straw at the paint drops in different directions, so you'll get fireworks. Do this as often as you like. Be careful, there should not be coloured paint on your silhouette. Paste your work finally on a coloured background.

This lesson is origanally from Art Attack.

Fireworks over the city

Made by Oscar, 11 years old

You need:

1. white drawing paper A3 size
2. oil pastels
3. liquid water colour
4. brushes
5. coloured paper for background

Children draw a New Years eve in three sections: foreground, middleground and background. At the bottom of the sheet they draw a lot of backs of human heads; these are the people looking to the fireworks. In the middle they draw a street with houses. People are standing in front of those houses, so think about overlapping! The third section is above the houses: beautiful fireworks. Colour everything with oil pastels. Use bright colours for the fireworks, including white. Don't draw too many details, that isn't easy to colour because of the oilpastels. Whey ready, paint the whole drawing with dark liquid watercolour, because new years fireworks are at night! The oil pastels will resist the watercolour.

Fireworks rockets

Fireworks, by children from 11-12 years old

You need:

1. tubes from Pringles
2. long wooden stick
3. construction paper in different colours
4. scissors
5. glue
6. wide tape
7. wire

Paste black paper around the tube. Decorate the rocket with stars, dots etc. cut out of coloured paper. Make a cap from a circle and paste it on the rocket. Fix the stick in the tube with wide tape. Take small tape to fix a piece of wire in the tube; this is the sliver.