Vincent van Gogh' Sunflowers by 2nd grade

I've been having a wonderful time working with the second grade in creating these sunflower still-lifes inspired by Vincent van Gogh.

The first week, we learned a little bit about the artist and why he enjoyed painting sunflowers (the yellow color made him happy). We broke it down into two sessions to complete these beauties:

Day #1--each student created their own vase shape and traced it, then added two horizontal lines on each side to separate the wall from the table. Next, came the paint. We used brown, orange and white on the yellow paper, keeping the wall the color of the paper. The kids had a great time mixing the paints to create peach and tan. The last step was to add at least 3 sunflower centers.

Day #2--We looked at a PowerPoint of van Gogh's series of sunflowers and observed all the texture he created in his work. Students used oil pastels to create dashes all over the surface of the paper to communicate visual texture and movement and bring those sunflowers to life!

On another note.....

I decided to make some "magnetic jewels" for my white board at the front of my room yesterday. I used plastic gems and buttons and a hot glue gun and voila! It's been a lot of fun to use them to display the artwork as students finish their masterpieces :)