Supplies: tag board, acrylic or tempera paint, white tissue paper in large pieces, and pink tissue paper cut into small squares.
1. After taking a look at Claude Monet's many lily pond paintings, students covered an entire piece of large tagboard with white tissue paper. This step was to give the pond water some texture, but if you wish to skip a step, this is the one. Students spread down glue with brushes, and then crumpled and pressed the tissue paper into place.
2. After the tissue paper dried, students flipped their ponds upside down, and I had them draw a "pond" shape on the backside. Then, I came around and corrected each pond before they could begin cutting, as some had the tendency to make them much too small.
3. Before we began painting, I asked them to pick a time of day for their pond (We took a second look at Monet's Paintings, and I had them guess what time of day it was in the picture. Remember the impressions are all about light). We began to paint the water with swirls and dabs just as the impressionists might, while being careful not to blend the colors too much.
3. While the ponds dried, we scraped and dabbed paint over paper that would later become our lily pads. You can also use coffee filters for lily pads as well.
4. Once the paper was dry, we used plastic lids and other round shapes to trace out the lilies. We cut them out and added a slit into the middle.
5. Next, we glued our lily pads onto the ponds.
6. We used several shades of pink as well as white to make our lilies. I cut them into squares prior to class, and showed the students how to add a small dab of glue between each tissue square, twist the end, crumple, and stick onto the lily pad.
Overall, I was extremely please with this project. I've done many variations of this over the years, but this was the first time I tried cutting out the shape of a pond, and it made all the difference!
