Winter Villages

This is a great seasonal art lesson, perfect for grades K-3. To begin, we read the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and we discussed some of the similarities between the character's snow day and our snow days.  Next, students wrote about their favorite thing to do on a snow day.  We used gray paper for this project because the long winter days in the Mid West are filled with mostly gray skies.  To begin, I demonstrated drawing houses using basic shapes.  We colored the houses with regular Crayola crayons and used a lot of pressure while coloring so the colors would look as bright as possible on the dark paper.  Next, we tore white paper to create the texture of fluffy snow.  The torn paper was glued under the houses and between the houses to create depth.  Lastly, we used white paint add snow on the top of the houses, trees, chimneys, and in the sky!  The students did a great job on this project, and it looks even better with iridescent glitter sprinkled on the top!