Christmas Favorites {Winter Cardinal}

 Since our school mascot is the Cardinal, I am always looking for beautiful cardinal lessons. I do several varieties a year....everything from school spirit cardinal posters to a really cute snow globe I designed a few years ago. (I'll have to get that typed with pictures, it is SO cute!)

This year, I fell in love with the Art Projects for kids watercolor cardinal so much that I decided to try her basic idea with a couple of classes of kindergarten.

Using Kathy's basic steps for drawing, I let the students use a wing tracer in the center of turquoise construction paper.

We used her basic steps, using a pencil to finish drawing the body, legs, eye, 'mohawk', tail etc.

After drawing, students trace over pencils lines with a sharpie, coloring in the black 'mask' around the face. Students could also add a twig....they choose whether the cardinal is flying away from the branch or about to land (depending on which side has the most room).

Students colored the beak and legs with a yellow construction paper crayon, and used a green construction paper crayon on the twig.

I split this lesson into three weeks. The second week, we painted the cardinal red and after everyone was done with red, I set out white paint for snow.

I had to STRESS, rather emphatically with my kindergarteners, NOT to let the two paint colors mix. I didn't even let both paint colors be on the table at the same time.

The third week, students re-outlined their sharpie lines and drew things back on that were gone after painting...like the eye and black mask. This step only took 4-5 minutes.

They are SOOOOO cute!! I can't wait to finish them up with other classes. The painting and drawing could all be done in one week...I just like to split things up sometimes.

Thanks for reading. If you do something similar this winter, I would love for you to post a link in the comments!!