Fourth Grade Texas Wildflowers

Materials Needed

• 9 x 12 poster board
• pencils
• black glue
• watercolors/brushes
• newspaper
Other resources
The Legend of the Bluebonnet- Tomie de Paola
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush- Tomie de Paola

Getting to Know series- Cezanne
Cezanne prints
Texas wildflower prints

My fourth graders read the books The Legend of the Bluebonnet and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, both by Tomie dePaola. When we finished, we looked at pictures of different Texas wildflowers. Using these pictures, they created their own still-life of Texas wildflowers. They started their still-life with a pencil drawing on a piece of white paper.

When they finished, they turned the paper over to the back and they colored on the back of the drawing with their pencil. It was really important to make sure the entire paper was covered in graphite.



They placed this on top of a piece of poster board, with the graphite touching the poster board. They used their pencil to trace over their original drawing, creating a graphite transfer onto the poster board.

Using black glue (I make this with school glue and black acrylic), they traced their lines. When the glue was dry, they used watercolors to paint their flowers. They used many different techniques to paint. They used wet-on-wet and dry brush. They used different values of the same color and made some of their own colors.

These turned out so stunning, that I used many of them for various shows throughout the year. Pin It

Kindergarten Bluebonnets

The rodeo project that I do with my kinder classes is another bluebonnet project. I do this one after we have studied different types of lines and warm/cool colors. We begin the project by looking at VanGogh's Sunflowers. We look at the different parts of his painting: the vase, the flowers, the stems.

We start our project by making the vase. The students choose the colors that they want to use for their vase (either warm or cool). They get a 1/2 piece of paper and fold it in 1/2. The draw a line from 1 side of the fold to the other side of the fold and then cut it out. When they open the paper up, this is their vase. They decorate their vase by creating patterns using lines in their chosen colors. They glue this onto a larger piece of paper (also in their chosen color) using glue dots.

They draw flower stems with either a green crayon or oil pastel.

During the next class, they add the flower petals for their bluebonnets. I put tempera cakes on each table. They get blue and either white, cream or yellow. I showed the students how to use 1 finger only to dip into a tub of water and then rub in the paint. They use this finger to create fingerprints along their flower stem.

When they finish making the blue petals, they add highlights to the flowers by dipping their finger into the lighter color (white, cream or yellow) and making a print on top of the blue print. Pin It

PreKindergarten Torn Paper Bluebonnets

In Houston, a big part of our fall semester is spent preparing for our annual Houston Livestock and Rodeo Exhibit. I have each grade level work on a project for this big event.

My prekindergarten students made Torn Paper Bluebonnets this year. It was the first year we did this project and they turned out beautiful!

We started the project by doing a wet-on-wet watercolor background. The students used spray bottles to spray a piece of watercolor paper with water. Then we used liquid watercolors and dropped color onto the paper using an eye dropper. For this particular project, we were learning about warm and cool colors, so we used warm colors on the background.

The students loved watching the colors bleed into each other!

We repeated the same process on a smaller piece of paper for the flowers. However, this time, we only used blue (cool colors).

By this point, the first session was over and we left the papers out to dry.

For the 2nd session, the students worked on tearing the blue papers into little pieces. I showed them the size we wanted (about the size of a quarter) and they set to work. By the end of the class, we had a flurry of blue flower petals all of over the room!

For the 3rd session, I had patterns for the vase ready to go. The students traced the pattern onto a piece of wallpaper (adding texture to their picture) and cut it out. They glued these at the bottom of their paper and added 3-5 strips of green constructions paper for the stems.

Then they started gluing flower petals onto the stems to finish off their Texas Bluebonnets.

I only meet with my Prekinder classes for 15-20 minutes, so I needed to break the project up into very short increments. It took us 3 classes to get them finished. Pin It