Sculpted Fossils and Stencil Flags

Fossil made with oil clay and plaster in a Styrofoam lunch tray

Stencil Flags made with freezer paper stencils ironed on muslin flags and painted with tempera

The first step in making the flags is drawing the stencil, cutting it out and ironing it onto the material.

Watercolor butterflies for fast finishers

This past week we made oil clay fossils stuck on a Styrofoam tray and then I poured plaster over each one. The lip of the tray held the plaster in as it hardened and then the students will pop their molds out next class time and we'll add some watercolor to the plaster to make it look like a rock around the fossil. This lesson was geared for fourth graders and we used the Utah raptor as our fossil dinosaur.

The fifth graders were learning about heredity animal variations, ex; tadpoles, frogs, caterpillars, butterflies. I had them trace a simple animal form on the non shiny side of freezer paper. I then had them come up to a table and I ironed their stencils onto the muslin rectangle. Next they went back to their tables and blotted paint all over their flag and around their stencils carefully. Next week we'll peel the freezer paper off and reveal the stencil art and then cut the bottom edge of the muslin to look like a flag, add a piece of yarn at the top  and hang them along the hallways in our school!