Thinkin' About Hearts for Valentine's Day

I'm thinking about using the cover of Eric Telchin's book, See a Heart Share a Heart as motivation for this heart project for one 2nd grade class this week. This is actually one of those little ideas that started out in my own sketchbook and I was having so much fun doing it that I started thinking about it for the classroom, too (with an added mention of Jim Dine).

The objectives will be centered on warm/cool colors and contrast.

Kids will be using a 9" X 12" illustration board. They'll have a 4" square to define the space for their heart. I'm thinking of having them use pastels for the background so they can have experience rubbing the pastels together for a soft look.

I plan to teach them how to cut out a heart thinking about the numeral "2" as their mental model.

After cutting out their heart, they will use it as a stencil to draw a heart shape inside their square, pressing VERY lightly on the pencil. Then students will draw long ovals to create the shape of the heart.

Next comes the coloring. Using crayons and/or oil pastels, we'll use warm colors to shade the oblong shapes. Some might want to add dimension to their shapes by shading one side of the oblongs darker and then blending the colors.

The last steps will be to outline using black crayon and adding a watercolor resist wash to the square.

                                    Happy Valentine's Day