Miss French Fry Makes Art: Month of the Military Child.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Month of the Military Child.

April is Month of the Military Child and my school really enjoys celebrating our amazing military families. We have a large population of students in our school whose parent(s) are currently serving either at our local military base or serving active duty overseas. These children and their families are wonderfully patient and giving people.

At the beginning of the month, our school staff hosts a big breakfast for our military families and every staff member brings a dish or two. I didn't have time (or energy) to bake, as a matter of fact my inner Martha Stewart has been on a serious hiatus, but Target's bakery had these bad boys on sale, so I styled them up a bit and called it a day.

Nothing beats cupcakes and cookies for breakfast, eh?

Then, at the end of the month, a few colleagues and I organize a big school-wide assembly to honor our wonderful heroes. I like to have patriotic projects on display as a backdrop during the assembly.

Below are our 3rd grade Jasper Johns-inspired flags:

Students first drew a rectangle for the flag's stars with a pencil and ruler.

We then cut apart lyrics to either the Pledge of Allegiance or The Star Spangled Banner and glued them down.

Love the Olympic rings in this one.

Then, we used the warm colors for the flag's stripes and cool colors for the star section.

Final texture details were added with some of my many hoarding tools below.

And below are the Kindergarten poppies based on Van Gogh's painting below:

Field of Poppies, 1890

We used tissue papers for our poppies and a little splash of green glitter for our stems.

And lastly, the Fourth grader's Lady Liberty paintings based on Peter Max's version:

Our backgrounds were made with oil pastels and tempera and the ladies were made from newspaper (pre-sprayed with green liquid watercolor), sharpies for the outlines, and copper paint for a nice little highlight.