Make Big Paper Bugs -- FREE pattern!

Making BIG paper bugs was a recent project . . .  I did this with a class of first graders. They had been studying insects, so putting paper bugs together by using three insect parts (head, thorax, abdomen) plus legs and antennae fit right in, and helped to reinforce what they'd been learning.

It was great to see the variety in colors and insect types of the resulting big paper bugs . . .

Also, I was glad that the pattern pieces I'd come up with worked so well, and wanted to make the paper bug pattern available to others.  So here it is!  The pattern pieces are in a short PDF ebook called Paper Insects Project, and it is up as a freebie on the Gentle Shepherd educational materials website: 

http://www.gentleshepcurr.com/paper-insects-project.html

Please feel free to share this link with others who may like to have a ready-to-go pattern for making HUGE paper insects :)

Van Gogh - style art pictures!

Van Gogh used a lot of tiny dash lines in many of his paintings.  So using this technique, I made some Van Gogh-style pictures.

First, a sketch --

Then with markers, lots of little dash lines; some of them go in twirly patterns, and some are in straight lines.

Next, color crayon is added -- to put in some more color flecks and shading.

Here is another set using felt pen first, then crayon added in:

This is a pretty easy technique, and the pictures turned out so nice; kids could easily use this method to make some beautiful impressionist-style artwork!