Owl Collage

My name is Sarah and I am a second year art teacher. Currently I am teaching at a small rural school and am the art teacher for grades K-12. Phew!!! (Yes, I am using my whole certification every day). I still have a lot to learn as an art teacher, but I want to share some successes as I go. Thank you to other blogs for inspiring me so much this year.

OK. For my first blog post, I would like to share this Owl Collage project that was inspired by a post on Mrs. Brown’s Art website. It is super simple and very visually effective when hung in the hallway.

I introduced this project by showing several YouTube videos (one of my favorite teaching tools). We listened to this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fppKGJD3Y6c&feature=related) and practiced our owl call , “who cooks for you, who cooks for you?” We also went over some fun owl facts including, owls cannot move their eyeballs, owls can turn there heads upside down and almost all the way around, and owls can hear a mouse from 60 feet away.

Students began their art project by drawing a branch at the bottom of a 9×12 piece of black construction paper using pencil. Then, they drew a circle for the head at the top and added a u-shaped body under the circle that almost touched the branch. Students tore up strips of brown paper to make their feathers. For gluing, students were instructed to pour out a small pile of glue, spread it out with the glue bottle tip, then glue on your pieces one-at-a-time. This teaches patience and careful craftsmanship. Avoid “dumping.”

Students used templates to trace and cut out the eyes and the feet and used scrap paper to cut a triangle for the beak. They also drew and cut out a new branch from  purple paper. One student even added a “hoot” thought bubble, cute!

I taught this lesson to K-2. The only adaptation I made for K was that I outlined the owl shape for them. This lesson took about 2 40-min class periods. The kids and their teachers were very happy with the outcome.

Ideas for next time: have students add more to the background (maybe a moon), show more detail for wings.