Art Lesson: Pretty as a Peacock

Another Art Lesson with a COOL Palette

Peacocks are large, colorful pheasants (typically blue and green) known for their iridescent tails. The male (peacock) Indian Peafowl has iridescent blue-green or green colored plumage. The peacock tail ("train") is not the tail quill feathers but the highly elongated upper tail coverts. The "eyes" are best seen when the peacock fans its tail. Like a cupped hand behind the ear the erect tail-fan of the male helps direct sound to the ears. Both species have a crest atop the head. The female (peahen) Indian Peafowl has a mixture of dull green, brown, and grey in her plumage. She lacks the long upper tail coverts of the male but has a crest. The female can also display her plumage to ward off female competition or signal danger to her young. ...more

Art Elements: Cool Palette, Naturally Repeating Patterns
Art Standards: Coloring, cutting, gluing

Parent/Teacher please preview these lesson plans before presenting: PATTERN Let's learn more about Patterns | Palette and other ART VOCABULARY

Materials:

Printable craft template tail feathers | peacock body

printable reference sheet pdf

Cardstock

tape, scissors, glue and pencil

coloring pencils, pens or crayons

This printable art lesson is designed to create a standing peacock. Slightly bend the tail feathers to create an angle that will allow the cardstock to stand alone. glue the face to the front middle. It is also possible to attach it to a toliet tube for more stablity.

More about the male peacock:

National Geographic

Art Lesson: Robert Frost Snowy Evening

Robert Frost Birch Tree Art Lesson |
FIVE IN A ROW & Classroom Art Project

After completing this kids craft / art project, I dicovered that this book is the foundation of a literature based unit study from Five in a Row. What a beautiful compliment to this home school study. I am so very pleased.

This is a kid Art Lesson detailed directions are here. Of course this was a success because it was tested by art instructor of 400 students Patty of Deep Space Sparkle. Birch Trees are a popular lesson for many schools. For this lesson we chose to use only cool colors to help with the evening feel. We also discussed shadow a bit adding an element of science into our literature and art lesson. We used this project in a mixed classroom of 5 - 11 year olds. They all completed it within the alloted hour time frame. We spent time reading Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening while the first layer (tissue) dried a bit. Then returned to our work by cutting our trees. Putting away the scissors (Which was a really important step with kinders in the room!); we talked about light and shadow and painted a bit. Glued on the trees and then painted the shadows on the paper. **The only change I would make on Deep Space Sparkle directions is have the children glue the trees to the paper before adding any paint. It caused a bit of confusion cutting the trees then painting then gluing and then painting again.

I HIGHLY recommend getting the book in conjunction with this project. The children of all ages clamoured to read it again after class. They searched for the hidden animals and explored again the pictures to find out WHY the old man was in the wood durning the snow storm. The link for the book sends you directly to amazon and is an affliate link which means I can purchase more great books for my classroom when you purchase using this link!