Confessions of a Modern Day [ex] Substitute Teacher: Flamingo Art

To create these flamingo’s it took us about 2 one hour classes.

Class 1

It was a long and dreary winter and we were all tired of the snow so I introduced this lesson by us having a class discussion about what we were most looking forward to once it gets nice.

I told the class that we were going to warm up the hallway outside of our classroom a bit and make some summer scenes that would involve us drawing flamingos.

I found examples of this art lesson online and I showed my students these other students work. We talked about things that we really liked about each painting and things that we thought we could improve on. One thing that I pointed out to them was the size of the flamingos. I told them that if they drew little itty bitty flamingos they would have a very difficult time cutting them out to encourage them to fill the space with the flamingo.

Flamingos aren’t something that most students have drawn before, nor did I expect them to know how to draw a flamingo. BUT, despite this I had high expectations that we could draw some fairly accurate looking flamingos this first class.

I provided each student with two handouts of “how to draw flamingos” and they each got out a piece of paper and we went through it step by step (I would model what the step required on the board and then they would do it on a piece of scrap paper). Everyone practiced drawing 2 different flamingos.

Then they picked the flamingo that they preferred to draw (or liked better) and drew it again, this time on a piece of thicker paper to use as their good copy. Once they had it drawn out in pencil we painted over it with pink paint. It didn’t matter if they went out of the lines because we would be cutting them out next class.

Class 2

We started this class by going over our pencil lines on our flamingos with a black Sharpie. Once they had outlined their flamingos they cut them out very carefully.

Then we talked about background. Since we were going to be warming up our hallway I told them that we would be painting our flamingos on a beach so we discussed what kinds of colours they would need to make a beach scene and what their backgrounds could look like. I told them that it didn’t matter if their scene was during the day or when the sun was setting and that they could make their paintings landscape or portrait.

Once their backgrounds were painted we talked about background and foreground. If their background was their beach scene what did they think their foreground was? (the flamingo)

To fill in some time while their backgrounds dried we have a bunch of “extra art pages” - they are designs that the kids can colour on paper. They enjoy doing them to fill in extra time throughout the day (such as if they finish their math early). During this time I also called up table groups to come pick an eye and feather for their flamingos (if they wanted to add these). Students were also required to clean up their paint, paint brushes, and water containers.

We used the last 5-10 minutes of class to glue their flamingos onto their background and add on their accessories.