Thank goodness we live in an age where we can get inspiration from teachers all over the world! Most art teachers are alone in their building, so we do not have the opportunity to collaborate with our peers as much as the other teachers do. I'm so blessed to live in an age where an art teacher clear across the country or world is accessible in mere seconds! We can all share our great ideas, and not have to leave the comfort of our pj's if we don't want to! Anyway.... As I was scrolling through Instagram, I came across this beautiful project from Art with Mrs. E. Her 4th graders did such a great job, I wanted to try it out with ours as well! We will be starting this when we come back from Christmas break! I love this technique of spreading chalk to create the look of the Northern Lights. Here's how I did it. Materials: Sargent Art chalk pastels Crayola White oil pastel Crayola Artista II white paint 9x12" Tru-Ray construction paper Sax 90 lb paper First start with black paper, and a piece of 90lb white paper. Tear that 90lb piece of paper 3 or 4 different ways horizontally. Then, use chalk pastels to add color to the top of the tear. Rub in an upward motion to spread the chalk onto the black paper. Oh, and add a thick white line in chalk for the snowy ground! Add more color than I did in this picture! I realized I didn't add enough when I starting spreading it, and not much color was coming off! Here's a new video showing how to color and spread the chalk onto your black paper For some reason the warm colors spread and colored better than the cool did. I did 4 layers, but you could do more or less, or even do them going in a different direction! Maybe vertical instead of horizontal! I'll try that next! The next class the students can add paint to their picture, by painting black evergreen trees, their reflection in the water, and stars or snow in the background. Now that I've completed mine, I'll do the stars before I do the trees next time! Whoops! Guess my trees will just have snow on them! When I instruct the students to do the stars, we will rub the bristles with our fingers to create the stars, so our paint dots are much smaller! After they paint the black trees, add the reflection of the lights with chalk to the water, in a horizontal motion. Then, add the reflection of the trees in a horizontal motion with black tempera paint. Stay tuned for some awesome art! Hope you and yours have the happiest of holidays, and a wonderful New Year! Last week we had a 1-2 hour delay, each day, so I haven't had 4th grade until today! Mrs. Fambrough's class is off to a wonderful start, and as usual, Mrs. Stacey is so very proud of them!! Dr. Fambrough's class did a great job today, too! “Lauren Stacey is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.”