Expressive Square Self-Portraits - 3rd grade

This was a new project that I found in a school arts magazine. The kid were to use a pattern out of squares and or triangles to make a self-portrait. Everyone has looooved the results! Some could have turned out better, but my son got sick right in the middle of this project so I had to take a few days off and not all substitutes have an art background, but overall I love the results! We just started off with a bunch of brightly colored one inch squares and practiced with pattern and making gongs out of the squares and triangles ( houses, snakes, cars, etc) then we planned out our portraits and glued them down when we were happy with results. Outlined in black paint then cut out around paint. It was hard to get the third graders to understand that the need to leave some construction paper around the black paint. Some got it some didn't. Then glued down onto another, cut it out and so on and so forth. This project took about 4-5 40 minute classes before we finished. 

Analgous Color Squares

Steps:

Draw 3 verticle lines
Draw 3 horizontal lines
Trace 3 circles
Draw 2 curvy lines from edge of paper to another line
Use two primary colors to create an analogous color scheme and add white

Art Focus: Circle Print

I stole this idea from another blog, only it was a while ago so I don't remember who...sorry:-( Anyway, I really loved the results even though we ended up running out of school year before we finished. What we did was dipped styrofome cups in black tempera and then stamped them onto an 18x24 sheet of paper, then painted each section with whatever colors they wanted. Some students chose a color scheme, some mixed all different colors together, and some went totally paint crazy:-)