One of my favorite projects with the second grade was related to their study of the San Francisco Bay. We started by taking a little field trip down to the bay with cameras to see what we noticed. Before we left I showed them examples of good and bad photos and we talked about how to use the cameras.I let them know that they would only get to keep 4 of their very best photos and gave them the chance to delete the others off of their camera before downloading them all to my computer.
I used iPhoto to make an "event" for each kid, which I then printed as a contact sheet. At the next class the students selected one to do a watercolor interpretation of. I stressed that we did not need a perfect copy, but that as an artist they had the freedom to make some choices about how to show something about the bay. If a student did not have great photos they had the option of selecting another from a large pile of extras that they other students no longer needed.
In their classroom the students wrote poems, and we pulled a few juicy words or a phrase out of their poems to include with their painting.
The final step was to come up with a simple shape of something we see in the bay to make a stamped border for their painting. This could include the things that people bring, like bottles & cans, or things we know are below the water such as fish or jellyfish. Each child cut a piece of foam and glued it to chipboard, which we let dry before printing on black paper. The blue, turquoise and white inks were particularly popular choices!
