Lovely ladybugs

1st graders learned about symmetry and insects while creating these beautiful painted ladybugs! 

Bicycles!

I saw an idea for this on one of the art blogs I follow and I'm so glad I tried it with 2nd grade!  We drew the bicycle step by step.  Then added the strips to the bottom and the background details with construction paper crayons.

Puzzle trees

I found this neat idea on Pinterest, of course, where I tend to find a lot of inspiration!  We painted our background during the first class.  Next we created patterns in our landscape, flipped our papers over and drew a tree on the back.  I encouraged them to keep their trees SIMPLE!  3 to 4 branches total.  After cutting the trees out, we put the puzzle back together and glued them down onto black paper so that the negative space now becomes the tree.  They are so unique!