Honeycombs and Lions

We are still studying bees, and concentrated on honeycombs this week. I developed a project with honeycomb shapes. I folded a sheet of copy paper and drew on a half honeycomb pattern. We cut them out in a "paper doll" type process to produce a simple honeycomb stencil. My initial idea was to color or paint a bottom page (we used card stock weight.) I planned to attach the honeycomb shape with tabs so it would stand out from the bottom paper giving more of a 3-D look. Then I wanted to attach bees that would also stand off the page by using tiny folded accordion papers attached to the back of the drawn or cut out bees. My smallest student made something close to this idea. (above)

The older kids suggested taping down the honeycomb as a stencil and coloring in the cell shapes. I thought this was also a great idea, so they tried it. Some drew their own bees and some used the clip art bees I printed out. All in all, we had fun with the different versions of this project.

 Top to bottom: Gideon (5), Elea (9), Whitney (11), Ian (10)

The other art project we did this week was drawing lions. We used paper bags to draw on for a rustic look. artprojectsforkids.org provided the lion tutorial. We drew with pencil, copied over the lines with black markers and colored in with oil pastels.