American Artist Charley Harper Bluebirds

Last year I introduced my students to the work of American Artist Charley Harper.  They created some wonderful cardinal paintings.  This year I decided to try his bluebird with second grade students.  First off I need to share, this bluebird was pretty hard.  I only did this lesson with one class and returned to the cardinal for the others.  This was our first day back after Thanksgiving break.  We had a huge snow storm that took down a lot of trees and one of my favorite trees outside of the Art room suffered a huge loss.  I stepped outside the room during my prep and picked up one of the fallen branches and brought it inside of the room.  It is still hanging on my whiteboard.  I decided to have the second graders observe the branch and attept to see it like a scientist.  They started the lesson by first practicing on a small sheet of paper and then they drew a larger second drawing.  To this one they added the Charley Harper bluebird.   All the drawing was done with black crayon and they painted with watercolors.  Students chose to make the night sky a dark purple or to make an orange early morning sky.