Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings were the inspiration for this project. Shown above is "Surprise" from 1891. The painting was projected when the students came in the room. We talked about what they saw and where this scene might take place. The timing worked out great because 2nd grade was studying habitats at the time. <--- Happy Accident. I asked the students where they thought the artist who made the painting might have lived and of course most of them thought probably close to the jungle. The students were surprised when I told them that Rousseau was a French artist who never actually visited the jungle! I read that Rousseau used books and even toy animals for reference.
I think there is a lot of green. My hippo looks very weird. I do not want to change it. I like my project a lot.
The first step of the drawing was making a row of leaf rubbings. After the leaves were done, the students chose one of the jungle animal books I pulled from the library and found a picture for reference. The animals were supposed to be drawn as though they were behind the leaves to add depth to the artwork. They drew first with pencil and then added colored pencil. When students finished, they wrote artist statements, you can view some of the artwork and read some second grade writing below!
I drew a white cheeked gibinnon. The white cheeked gibinnon was hard to draw.
I drew a tiger. It will be hard to draw. It takes you 1 to 2 minutes. I learned that you can see that tigers live in the jungle. They're wild.
I drew a jungle, an armadillo, a cheetah, and a monkey. I like my picture.
This monkey is named Lilg. The bird is named Milly. Lilg liked bananas and Milly likes bird food. I drew them from a book.
Last week my student teacher wanted to do a texture exercise with 3rd graders to lead in to her next lesson. We were thinking about taking the students outside to find nature textures in the courtyard, but the grass was soaking wet. Luckily, there was a plethora of texture on the playground! I never thought about all the textures we would find there before that morning. We called the lesson a "Texture Hunt" and Miss Bennett showed the students how to collect the textures and create a nonobjective composition, thinking about what textures they were putting where, and how they created new textures when overlapped. 
I knew the students would enjoy having Art class outside, but I was surprised by how much they got in to finding textures. They were experimenting and discovering and collaborating. We did have to remind a couple students that it wasn't recess time, but overall, they did very well.
