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!

Garden Gnomes

I loved this garden gnome project posted by Laura at Painted Paper: http://paintedpaperintheartroom.blogspot.com/2012/02/little-garden-gnomes.html
I decided to make a simplified version for my class of adults with learning disabilities.
We made a background by sponge painting with different shades of green paint. I emphasised that they should only use a small amount of paint at a time and should still have some white paper showing through. Some of the backgrounds looked so good it was almost a pity to cover them up at all!
We put these aside to dry and started working on the gnomes. I wanted to provide templates which were as easy to draw round and cut out as possible and came up with 3 triangles - different sizes for the body, hat and beard. With the help of their carers, students cut the triangles out of the painted paper they made a few weeks ago. I gave out circles for faces and black paper boots which I had cut out for them earlier and we glued all the bits together to make the gnomes. The next step was to draw a face and add any other details they could think up. Most of my students are unable to draw with any control and so they rely on their carers for this part. Some of the carers really went to town and created some very artistic gnomes as you can see from the photos!
We had time left to make a quick toadstool from half a paper plate. We glued the gnome and the toadstool onto the background and some students added some flowers to complete the garden scene.