8th Grade 2-Point Perspective Dream Tree Houses

While I was subbing last spring, I was asked to teach two point perspective to the 8th graders. Instead of having them draw a standard house, I decided it would be fun to have them draw dream tree houses. This project is from Mini Matisse and she does it with 7th grade students, but the 8th graders enjoyed it. She also has a video that walks you step-by-step through the project (that was great for students who were absent and needed to catch up).

I had grand plans of also doing a shared project with my son's second grade classroom, but it didn't pan out due to time restrictions (but NEXT time I would have the littles brainstorm dream treehouse elements and have the 8th graders incorporate those into their work and then bring the treehouse images back to the second graders and have them write about the tree houses and create their own images).

This house has a car coming out of it!

I had the book, "Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb" by Peter Nelson on hand for some creative inspiration. WOW! Some of those tree houses are just fantastic!!

Vocab for the project: 2 point perspective, horizon line, vanishing points, parallel, horizontal, vertical, construction lines, recede, diverge, cube, depth

Anyway, the project was a great learning experience and I created two worksheets/handouts to go with the project. The first, a treehouse brainstorming sheet allowed the students to come up with ideas for their tree houses and tell me a story about their houses (those were fun to read!). I also came up with a an assessment checklist for the student and I to make sure that all of the expectations for the project were met.

Treehouse brainstorming sheet to be passed in with final drawing.

The checklist I used to assess the drawing.

Enjoy these creative dream tree houses! Sorry some of the pictures are wonky!

The bulletin board display. I added a title and the book by Nelson to the case as well.

Homemade Stamps for Printmaking

Here's a great way for you to explore stamping and printmaking. And, it's inexpensive, fast and fun!

This past fall, at the NH Art Educators Association Conference, I went to a printmaking talk given by Liam Sullivan from the NH Institute of Art. One of the ideas he had for younger students was to make a bunch of stamps using wine corks as the handle. He suggested using bottle caps and such and gave us all sorts of interesting ideas for making stamps. Well, I asked around and someone gave me a big bucket of wine corks and then I started collecting bottle caps, caps from glue sticks, foam shapes, buttons, etc. Once I had a sizable stash, I heated up the glue gun and glued my "findings" to the wine corks.

We used some of the stamps to make Modern-dayAdinkra Cloths, but we also did this simple project that I got from Liam's slideshow. The children had fun digging through the box of stamps I brought in trying out all of the different ones and were very impressed with their finished pieces. This project not only showcases printmaking, but is great for explaining pattern, line, and repetition.

Stamping Sampler (Or "Stampler")

Supplies Needed:

• Stamps (see above description)
• Tempera paint, assorted colors
• One 8 1/2" x 11" piece of yellow paper
• One 9" x 12" piece of construction paper for backing/matte
• Pencil
• Newspapers
• Glue stick

Directions:

1. Make the stamps according to the description above. Some good ideas for stamps are shapes cut from craft foam, milk jug caps, glue stick caps, and wooden shapes (I even cut a few NERF bullets crosswise and made some interesting stamps).

The possibilities for homemade stamps are endless!

2. Draw a line on your paper going from one side to the opposite side. The line can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, wavy, curved, zigzag, etc. 

3. Select a stamp, dip it into the paint and stamp it repeatedly along the line you drew.

4. Choose another stamp and another color and stamp another row of stamps parallel to your first line of stamps. Continue until the entire page is filled with rows and rows of multi-colored stamps!

A work in progress. This piece uses a large sheet of construction paper (12" x 18").

5. Mount your finished paper onto a coordinating color of construction paper using a glue stick.

ENJOY!

Some examples from my home school class.