Pumpkins Under a Twinkling Sky by 1st grade

1st graders packed in a lot of learning with this pumpkin project! I meshed together an older lesson about starry night skies with pumpkins and I'm pleased with the outcome (I was inspired by a post at Deep Space Sparkle). On day one, we practiced drawing stars first. Once students felt confident, they used oil pastels to draw stars all over a piece of 12x18 blue construction paper. They painted the paper using black tempera cakes to create a resist effect. 

On day two, we reviewed color mixing and talked about how to draw pumpkins. Students were encouraged to draw their own pumpkin really big onto a piece of 11x14 art paper using pencil. Then we mixed yellow and red paint directly on our paper to fill in our pumpkins! 

On day three, we colored in the stem, traced the lines of the pumpkin with crayon, cut out some grass and glued everything down. The final step was smudged chalk for the highlights and a simple shadow on the ground. If students felt that too many stars were covered up by the pumpkin, they drew more on!!