How to Paint Chicks

Here's a fun painting project for your little one.  You'll need almost any brand of acrylic paint and a pad of watercolor paper.  You can buy a decent set of brushes for under $5, but if you get cheap, flimsy brushes, you child will be forever frustrated.  Most catch-all kids art kits come with terrible brushes.

Of course the last thing you want to do is teach kids there's a right way to paint something.  Hopefully this will just give them confidence that they CAN paint.  Chose a favorite animal, and break it down into very simple shapes.  Yesterday we did this with pandas and they turned out great.  It's important to do two layers.  For example, one solid color for a lizard shape, and then spots or stripes over the solid color.  Acrylic paints dry so fast, that you can do this all in one sitting.

Watercolor paper and acrylic paint is my new favorite combo.  Acrylic paint can work like watercolor if you water it down.  If you buy a little thicker brand of acrylic paint, it's fun to paint on colored paper.  Zebras, panda bears, penguins, swans... work better on colored card stock because the white parts of these animals would disappear on a white background.

How to Draw The Ocean Floor

This project could be done with any medium.  The main idea is to start with a silhouette of objects that are deep in the background.  The distance of water will make the background objects barely visible.

Draw Sky, Surface, and Under the Sea

This lesson teaches students how the can easily show several different planes or spaces in one, two-dimensional drawing.  First I showed the students the example project and we talked about each of the four spaces in which we could see objects.
1)Up in the sky
2)The surface of the water and land
3)The ocean depth
4)The ocean floor

I demonstrated how to draw the three lines that separate these spaces and we talked about where a bird, a boat, a fish, or coral would be drawn.  After this the students are free to add anything they want.  You may want to spend more time brainstorming so that the students can come up with their own ideas.

As always, it's great to bring in photo reference.  Many ocean books have photos that show above and below the water.  The non-fiction section of the library is an endless source of inspiration to me!  For ideas that aren't photographs, check out Magic School Bus On the Ocean Floor.