7th Grade Art of Conservation

Every year my 7th grade class, which runs second semester, makes artwork for either the Jr Duck Stamp Program or the State Fish Art Contest. Both programs teach about conservation through art and pull in a lot of science. We are able to cover a lot of drawing skills as well and it tends to build confidence so I love starting with it. 

On the first day of the unit, I ask students to draw a duck/goose or a fish and I don’t give much more instruction than that. I tell students it is their pre-assessment so I don’t offer any help or advice other than “do your best”. It’s so much fun to look at the before and after for each student at the end of the unit. It’s not usually the same animal but you can still see so much growth!

Here are the finished artworks from last January! The situation will be a little different this year but I'm going to figure out how to make it work.

This drawing placed in the State Fish Art Contest last year!

2019 State Fish Art Contest

I've written about the State Fish Art Contest before (see posts here) because I feel like it, along with the Jr Duck Stamp, are great programs that merge art and science. It's always a choice for my students to complete the art and an additional choice on if they want to enter the contest or not. This year I only had 3 students choose to enter... and 2 were my own children! My kids worked on their projects over spring break and it was a good distraction from screens since spring break in Kansas is usually too cold to do much outside.

My oldest son chose the Colorado state fish- the greenback cutthroat trout. He had watched me using watercolors a few months before so he was excited to try out some techniques. He drew the fish and used masking fluid to trace the outline. He used a wet on wet technique to paint the water, letting drops of color fall on the wet paper and then sprinkled coarse sea salt and some table salt on the wet paint to create a pretty cool effect.

When the background was dry, he painted the body of the fish and later used colored pencils to add details.

Showing off his finished painting

My middle son used a wax resist technique, adding watercolor over his crayon drawing of a channel catfish.

Some states have a lot more participation in this program than others. It is not well known in Kansas but it is a worthwhile program, especially if you have students or children of your own interested in wildlife, conservation, or environmental science.

2014 State Fish Art Contest

1st place oil pastel drawing of a Channel Catfish in the Mighty Minnows age group

Last school year I continued the tradition of offering the students a choice between the Jr. Duck Stamp program and the State Fish Art Contest. Both programs focus on teaching conservation through art and have a focus on habitat and observational drawing. This year I was floored when my students swept the awards for the Mighty Minnows (K-3rd grade) and 4th-6th grade age groups. If you teach in Kansas, please tell your students about this contest. They need some competition. :)

2nd and 3rd place in the Mighty Minnows age group.

 

Starting in the 4th-6th grade age group, students are judged on an essay about their fish species in addition to their artwork. My 5th grade 1st place winner made her essay more interesting by making interesting comparisons, such as the size of a bluegill to her hands.

1st place in the 4th-6th grade age group.

 2nd and 3rd place winners in the 4th-6th grade age group.

2013 State Fish Art

Last year was the first year I offered the State Fish Art contest to students in addition to the Jr. Duck Stamp program. It was another successful year! Once again a lot of students found fish easier to draw than waterfowl. Someone suggested that maybe their experiences seeing fish are behind glass in an aquarium so they feel more comfortable translating them to 2D... Beyond the drawings, we also had success in the contest! Four of my students placed in our state taking 2nd and 3rd in both the Mighty Minnow (K-3rd) and 4th-6th grade age groups. Beyond the Mighty Minnow group, students are required to write an essay about their chosen fish species in addition to their artwork submission. (This is why few of my intermediate students actually enter the contest!)

4th-6th grade Winners:

Kansas 4th-6th grade 2nd place (6th grader)

Kansas 4th-6th grade 3rd place (5th grader)- this student drew from the mounted fish I brought to school!

 Here are some of the other 4th-6th grade drawings made by my students.

Mighty Minnow winners:

Kansas K-3rd grade 2nd place (3rd grader)

Kansas K-3rd grade 3rd place (1st grader)

The results were just posted online this week so while I haven't had a chance to congratulate my 5th and 6th grade winners, it was so much fun to go make the announcement to the classes of my 3rd and 1st grade winners. 

There's a Bass in my Art Room!

My primary and intermediate kids have just finished their artwork for either the Jr. Duck Stamp program or the State Fish Art contest. Snow days messed up the scheduling a bit so I had to extend the deadline for some of my 1st-3rd grade students to this week. We have a teacher work day on Friday and the majority of my time will be spent photographing and preparing the artwork to mail in. I felt like I was able to be more thorough in my instruction this year after I learned so much at the Jr. Duck Stamp ambassador workshop in Utah last September. (Read about that here and here.) I was able to add many more reference photos to my collection.

My addition to the fish program was to borrow the Catfish my dad caught when I was 19 months old! Phyl may have a dragon in her art room, but I have a Channel Catfish in mine! There were a couple awkward attempts to explain how taxidermy works, and a few students thought the fish was "gross", but the main reaction was interest and awe. Most of my students have never had the opportunity to go fishing so they haven't seen a real fish outside of a zoo or aquarium. I left the fish out for a couple days but after it got knocked over- twice- and the tail cracked, I realized the students just weren't aware enough to keep their distance. The fish retired to my closet and was just brought out for specific students who were brave enough to draw from it instead of a photo.

I had a table set up with reference photos for each contest, organized by species. The State Fish Art website has cool fact sheets about each species that helps remind students of what would make an appropriate habitat for the background of their artwork and also helped with essays.

Fish photos are pretty easy to keep organized since I only chose the 3 species the students would be most familiar with in our par of Kansas. I have many more duck reference photos and last year simple stacks were too hard for the students to keep organized. This year, I taped labels to the table thinking that if the students couldn't recognize the proper place from their photo, they could read the species name labeled on the back of the photos and match them up. This helped a bit... or maybe after the second class period that I made the students go fix the mess they created, they just started to pay more attention. To help with habitat, I printed a bunch of reference photos I took at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah. Some are "zoomed out" and some are close up photos of wetland vegetation. I also took a cue from the State Fish Art contest and created "bio" sheets for each of the waterfowl species I have photos of. I asked the students to read the bio for their bird before they drew the background to give them clues. Wood ducks nest in tree cavities? Gee, maybe you should draw the duck standing on a fallen tree instead of that rock at the zoo in the photo.

It looks like I forgot to take a picture of my big display on my fancy new classroom bulletin board but it was basically a combination of the displays from last year seen here with some new materials I picked up on my Ambassador trip.

Students are always excited to see artwork I've made so I brought in some examples. Wood Duck watercolor painting on the left, colored pencil Canada Goose I made for an example a few years ago, and a mixed media picture of a hen Mallard and ducklings on the right.

I can't wait to go through and see the results of all the students' hard work. I just wish we had more Art time to devote to the project. I had students waiting to work in the Art room every time I had open slots available for them on my days at the intermediate school. :)

1st-3rd Grade Fish

Here are some of the 1st-3rd grade results from the State Fish Art contest. When I started this lesson with my 4th-6th grade students, I thought they had to use a Channel Catfish since it is the (unofficial) state fish of Kansas. I found out I was just confused from it being my first year trying the program so the younger students had more choices. I chose fish I thought they would be familiar with in addition to catfish- Bluegill and Largemouth Bass. The primary students used a combination of colored pencils and  Crayola Color Sticks. This was awesome in comparison to last year where I spent most of my time sharpening colored pencils or unclogging pencil sharpeners. When color sticks were used most of the time, no sharpening was required! You'll also see below that some of the students created interesting textures in the water by rubbing color sticks on their side.

You can read more about this lesson here: http://artteacheradventures.blogspot.com/2012/06/art-of-conservation-ducks-and-fish.html  and more about the State Fish Art Contest here: http://www.wildlifeforever.org/contest