Beautiful Pastel Butterflies
Today the Nathan’s class of five and six year olds came to do the same art lesson that Thena’s class had done a few weeks earlier. I had a great time teaching Thena’s class so was really looking forward to teaching the lesson again.
To start the day painted the grassy backgrounds for their butterfly to go on. Last time we did the painting after the butterflies and unfortunately the backgrounds didn’t dry in time to put the artworks together at the end of the day. Lesson learnt!
After modelling how to blend paint on the paper, I gave the students green and yellow paint and let them get creative. It was interesting watching the various painting techniques that the students tried. Some did dabs, others did large swirls while others did twists with their brushes.
We learnt about butterflies by reading a selection of wonderful books from our school library. The students learnt that butterflies are insects and that their bodies are split into three (head, thorax and abdomen), that they have four wings which join to the thorax and that they have two antenna.
The students were very excited to start drawing their butterflies. They drew their outlines in yellow pastel first before adding simple patterns in a run of three hot colours. I showed them how to blend the pastels and asked them to try to keep the patterns symmetrical across the wings on their butterfly. The students then blended cold colours in the space left to finish their butterflies.
The green grassy backgrounds were dry by lunchtime which meant we were able to complete the artworks in one day. The students cut out their own butterfly and glued them to their background by carefully applying PVA glue with a paintbrush.
The lovely finished artworks will be for our school-wide Calendar Art fundraiser. Later on in the year the families will get a chance to purchase calendars, diaries, notebooks and cards with their child’s lovey artwork printed on them. In the meantime check out the gallery below filled with beautiful butterflies.
