Second Grade Self Portraits

Second grade students created their self portraits by going through a number of stages and materials.

I was inspired by a lesson I found on The Incredible Art Dept. site. This particular lesson had students connect self portraits with the artist Peter Max and The Statue of Liberty. (http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/elem/selfport.htm) -You will find the lesson by scrolling down about a third of the page.
I tweaked the lesson to meet the needs of my second graders.

The second graders started this lesson by drawing a self portrait. After that, the lesson fell off the track of normal expectations as everybody used a black Sharpie marker to trace their self portrait drawing onto a sheet of transparency.

When the tracing was complete the self portraits were put aside and the tempera paint came out. Students painted the colors that reflected their personality onto a sheet of paper with lots of color mixing.

When dry, students stapled their self portrait transparency on top of their painting, mounted it onto a colored piece of construction paper and used buttons to decorate the borders.