Spotlight On: Stand-Up People

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Create cute, miniature people who can stand on their own two feet!

These sturdy card stock figures are terrific for a multitude of different art projects and as components in presentations for other subjects. Use paint, marker, crayon, pencil crayon and collage materials to decorate your stand-up person. The large size (7 1/4 x 11 1/2″) is perfect for bringing out the fine detail in your artwork.

Use these art bases for “All About Me” art! Glue a photograph to the face of a figure, and decorate the body to resemble your favorite outfit. Finish by writing your name on your stand-up person so your classmates will always recognize you!

Create an abstract self-portrait! Try using our paint pad with tempera paints to create a colorful base. Then gently press a card person into the paint. Remove, and allow to dry. Then tape a photograph of yourself to the face! For more about using our paint pad to make beautiful pints, check out this blog posts.

A great first week of school activity is pairing students off and challenging them to introduce their partner to the class! Have students interview each other, and create a portrait of their partner to present to the class along with personal facts like age, favorite food, and favorite color!

Are written book reports starting to become a grind? Add a new dimension to them by challenging students to create a portrait of their favorite character in their book. The portrait can serve as a visual aid to help keep other students engaged.

Bring social studies to life with historical figures! Consider assigning each table (or group) a theme, and each student will create a portrait of a different historical figure. If students have a math theme, they might create figures of Ada Lovelace and Pythagoras. A science theme could include Einstein and Marie Curie.

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Personalized Portfolios

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Get kids excited for an artful school year with this useful back-to-school craft!

Every child needs a portfolio to keep their exceptional art and school work in. Get to know your students by having them personalize their portfolio!

Age: 4+

Duration: 5-10 Minutes

Learning Outcomes: Practice names, exercise fine motor skills, and encourage adding art to everyday objects.

You’ll Need:

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Provide each child with a folder. If the children are sitting in groups, give each group a paper doll pad and a handful of alphabet pasting pieces. To keep things neat, try using a finger paint tray or bowl to hold all the alphabet pieces. Ask each child to choose a paper doll from the pad. The variety of skin tones in the pad will reflect the diversity in your classroom!

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Using a glue stick, glue the paper doll onto the front of the folder.

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Decorate the paper doll! Children can be encouraged to do self-portraits for this activity, or they can decorate the doll as their favorite character from a book or movie.

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Knowing whose folder is whose is important! The final step in this project is for children to find the pasting pieces with the letters of their names on them, and paste their names to their folder.

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These folders will keep a student’s artwork safe throughout the school year! During the last week of school, bring out the portfolios so students can really see their artistic progress from the first week of school to the last week.

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Action Shapes

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These poseable, personalized action figures are great for setting up easy puppet theatre-style plays or making a stop motion animation movie! Learn more below!

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Each Action Shape comes in separate parts laid onto sheets. Before popping out all the pieces, ask students to identify the different parts of the body and label them if possible. That way you can keep track of where each piece attaches. The Action Shapes are great for teaching students about proportions, poses or turning projects into All About Me activities!

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Help students orient their Action Shape person according to proper proportions.

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As they are putting their figures together, they can start coloring in details. Use markers, crayons or pencil crayons.

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Make sure to completely cover the Action Shapes body with color!

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The pieces attach together with small fins and slots to keep the fins in place.

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Simply pinch the fins together, and slide them through the slots.

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Fan out the fins to keep the attachments in place.

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This Action Shape was completely colored in before assembly, so the attachments appear seamless!

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Now strike a pose!

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We even had some of the campers pose in our makeshift puppet theatre!

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Everyone else got in on the fun too! To make a stop-motion animation, first think about the kind of action you want your character to perform. This is a great chance for you to discuss the different types of action words or verbs with your students. You can have your students pick one action verb to illustrate through their stop motion video.

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Stop motion animation is made up of multiple single frames or “shots.” These shots are strung together to make up a video. The best way to achieve this is to set up any standard camera you own to take a shot every time your students adjust the poses of their Action Shapes people. Once the action is complete, upload your pictures to your computer. Use software that can easily convert your pictures into a GIF animation or equivalent.

Here’s a look at what we made with stop-motion animation!

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She kicks, she scores!

Your students will have lots of fun preparing their own stop-motion animations. For the background, use a large sheet of Bristol board or have your students create their own backgrounds with sheets of paper and markers or crayons!

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Craft Spotlight: Stand Up Self Portraits!

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This week’s Craft Spotlight features our Stand Up Self Portraits! Are you gearing up for Parent-Teacher night? Or are you in need of a project that children can use to introduce themselves to each other? Perfect for “All About Me” crafts, Stand Up Self Portraits encourage children to explore self-expression and self-representation!

Stand Up Self Portraits give students the freedom to experiment with their artwork–use crayons, markers, pencil crayons or a variety of collage materials to decorate the appearance of your portrait!

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Our crafters used markers and crayons to decorate their Stand Up Self Portraits. They used the indicators on the Stand Up Self Portrait help students locate where various facial features belong. There are six little pinprick indicators in total.

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The two topmost indicators represent the points at which to place the eyes. Draw small circles around the indicators to represent pupils. Enclose the pupils in an almond shape to form the eyes. Add details such as eyelashes and eyebrows.

Use the middle two indicators to draw the nose. Finally, the space between the last two indicators can be used to draw the mouth.

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Paste the sides of the Stand Up Self Portrait with yarn, tissue paper or cut construction paper to make the hair!

A great way to introduce students to each other, or prepare the classroom for Parent-Teacher night!

Line-11Let us know how your students’ portraits turned out by sending photos to subscriber@roylco.ca! We’d love to see your classroom artwork!