2nd Grade Stars and Stripes

2nd Grade classes finished Stars and Stripes just in time for Veteran's Day!

I found this lesson on Mrs. Picasso's Art Room Art Blog. http://mrspicassosartroom.blogspot.com/ Thank you for sharing this! It was posted in her Flickr Photostream area. Bells and whistles went off when I saw it! Tissue paper collage, printing, "how to draw a star" and Jasper John's... lots of wonderful concepts to explore! Fortunately it took a couple of classes to complete so I broke down the concepts into manageable pieces.

After completing their artwork, students got busy creating Thank You cards for veterans. It was great using the scraps left from the Stars and Stripes. Lots of variations happened on the cards, including students cutting out a lot of small stars and adding them to their design. The second grade classroom teachers worked with their classes writing the note that went inside the Thank You cards. One classroom teacher had her students write short descriptive paragraph about Veteran's Day and posted them on the bulletin board with all of the Stars and Stripes.
After school on Friday I dropped off the cards at nursing homes in Green Bay and DePere, WI. I sent an email out to the staff inviting them to take a Thank You card to share with any veterans that they knew. Several teachers came down for a card, and one offered to take the remaining cards to a friend who will get them to active servicemen from our area. Sweet!
The heart design on the cards came from Mrs. Picasso's Flickr Photostream too.

Drawing a star is a challenge for second grade, but they were excited to try it! Everyone flipped their dry tissue collage paper over and practiced two small stars on the back of the paper before tackling a big one in the middle of their paper. After this I brought out tracer stars and students had the choice of using their own drawn star or using the tracer.