Cotton Woolly Spring Lambs

Adorable spring lambs were the inspiration for my workshop today. I showed my students a photograph of a lamb and pointed out the pink in its ears and around its eyes.
The first step was to use a cardboard template to draw and cut out 2 ears. Most of my students, who are all adults with learning difficulties, are able to draw around a stencil if someone holds it still for them. Others can hold the template still while their carer draws around it. I then gave out pink paint and asked everyone to paint inside the ears, keeping a white border. I also asked them to paint 2 pink eyes onto a large paper plate to which we added black painted centres. Now it was time for the fun to start! Students spread glue onto the plate and stuck down cotton wool balls, avoiding the eyes. I demonstrated how to tease out the cotton wool to make it fluffier. One of my students is completely blind and she really enjoyed the texture of the cotton wool. Everyone made a great job of this part of the task. Once they were done, I gave out pre-cut black paper noses and pink felt tongues and bits of wool to make a mouth. The final step was to glue on the ears. Making the ears point out to the sides rather than upwards makes it look like a lamb rather than a rabbit!

St David's Day Rabbits and Daffodils

It is good luck to say 'white rabbits' three times when you wake up on the 1st of March (I've no idea why!) and daffodils are the national flower of Wales, so I decided that this project would be a good one for St David's Day.
I pre-cut some rabbit silhouettes (students could choose between pink and brown) and demonstrated how to use a dry brush technique to paint fur onto the rabbits. After putting them aside to dry, we used petal-shaped sponges and yellow paint to print daffodil petals onto a large sheet of pale green paper. Most of my students are very familiar with sponge printing now and have really got the hang of it. I passed around green pastels so that they could draw some stalks and leaves. The next step was to add details to the rabbits. We just used marker pens for this which worked fine on top of the dry paint. After glueing the rabbit onto the centre of the picture, we created 3D daffodil trumpets by sticking on little paper cup cases. By an amazing stroke of luck I found miniature paper cases which were already coloured yellow. I think the project would also look nice with white paper cases.

Sponge Print Flowers

This was a lovely project which my students really enjoyed.
I began by handing out a picture of a Viking vase which they coloured in using metallic markers. Most of my students are unable to draw or use scissors so this was a nice way for them to create a personalised vase for their flowers. I encouraged them to spend plenty of time concentrating on their colouring. I then gave out paint and sponges cut into flower-petal shapes. I had put bunches of red, yellow and purple tulips on the tables so these were the colours of paint which I handed out. I gave the students lots of large sheets of paper and let them practice printing for a while. I demonstrated how to create different types of flower using the sponges. Once they had got the hang of the printing, we glued the vases onto a fresh sheet of paper and then printed our bunches of flowers. I got them to use green oil pastels for the stems as I anticipated that the pictures could become quite messy if green paint was introduced.
Everyone was very proud of their artwork!