Fox in the Snow

I have to say, some of my best ideas are the ones that come to me last minute.  I didn't like my plans for second grade today.  I wasn't excited about them.  So I decided to scrap them at the last minute and we ended up with this instead!  Such a simple drawing, the kids loved it and it was such a quick, one period lesson.  We started by talking about something that I talk about ALOT!   You can draw anything, no matter how complicated, by breaking it down into simple shapes.  We looked at pictures of foxes and had a discussion how we would draw a fox using simple shapes.  We broke the head, body, legs, and tail into simple shapes, like triangles, ovals, and rectangles.

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We drew our foxes on orange paper and used oil pastels to add areas of interest with color. Kids loved how the white showed up.  I encouraged kids to use untraditional color if they liked, I even showed then this inspiring picture by Beth Gareen.    But, to my surprise most kids stuck to colors like the photos we saw.  We had looked at a few pictures of foxes in the snow.  We had a quick discussions on shadows and kids were eager to share examples of where and when you might see your shadow.  We made our shadows by adding a black piece of paper behind our foxes as we carefully cut them out.  This was a great cutting exercise for the little ones.  (I feel like kids are coming into school with NO cutting experience and can always really use the practice.)  Some kids needed a bit more help so I taped their papers together.  After they were cut out we chose to kep it very simple by gluing them on plain white paper.  Kids chose how and where to place their foxes and shadows.  I like how simple these are and they look strikign when displayed together.  Below are some second grade student works.

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