Second Grade: Crab

Second Grade: Crab

    For the second project of the year, all of the classes will be making a glow in the dark sea creature! We will be using glow in the dark paint and neon oil pastels to make our sea creatures come to life. At the end of the year art gallery, we will display all of the glow in the dark sea creatures in our very own Glow Gallery!

(Photo courtesy of Cassie Stephens' blog)

Each grade will do a different sea creature. Second grade will be making crabs.

Supplies: 

• Rectangular mixed media paper
• Neon/florescent oil pastels
• Black marker
• Pencil
• Florescent tempura cakes
• Paint brushes
• Water bowls with sponge
• Spray bottles with neon paint 

    Please use the document camera in the classroom to show the step by step instructions. One art volunteer can sit at the desk at the front of the room to demonstrate the steps and guide the students through the project. Here are the instructions for the crab & example pictures. These will also be printed out in the classroom for you to follow. 

  Try to save a few minutes for at the end of class to turn the lights off in the classroom and turn on the black lights that are in the art closet (or they may already be plugged in around the room). The kids will love getting to see their art projects glow! The squeals of delight will be worth it! ;) 

1. First write your name and your teachers name on the back of the paper with a pencil. Turn the paper over and grab a marker (these instructions are in pencil, but we realized we just need to have the students do the project in marker. We ran out of time having them draw in pencil and then trace it with marker). Flip it over and draw two circles towards the top of the page. These will be the crab’s eyes. 

2. Next draw a semi-circle at the top right of each eye and the bottom left of each eye. These are the highlights of the eyes. 

3. Next draw a bigger circle around the eyes. 

4. If you would like to add eyelashes, add them now! 

5. Next draw a big upside down semi circle… will look like a big sad face :(

6. Maybe the crab is sad because his eyes aren’t attached to his body. Attach the eyes with two lines.. they can be slightly curved. 

7. Now finish the crab’s body by drawing a slightly curved line from one side to the other. And draw a smiley mouth or whatever kind of mouth you would like! 

8. Now draw one U shape on the right side of your paper. This will be one of the crab's claws. 

9. Now draw a V in the middle of the U to finish the claw. 

10. Connect the claw to the body of the crab just like we did with the eyes. Try to draw it a little bit closer to the eyes that what we did here.. it will give you more room to add the crab's legs in a few minutes. 

11. Now repeat the process on the left side of the page for the other claw. Draw a U shape to start and then add a V shape. 

12. Now we are going to start adding legs to our crab! Crabs have 6 legs, so we are going to draw three on each side. Think about how you are going to space the legs out on the crab. The legs can come out of the bottom of the body, too. Draw a wide upside down V shape and then draw another line of the same shape to create one leg. 

13. Repeat the process and draw 3 legs on the other side of your crab. 

14. Add some circles or whatever other design you would like to add to your crab. We will color these in with different colors in a few minutes. 

15. Make sure to color in the eyes! Leave the semi-circle highlights to give your eyes some light! 

16. Now it's time to color in our crabs! Use the neon oil pastels on your table. Oil pastels are fun to use and different than crayons that we are used to. You don't need to press hard or color the whole thing in. You can use your finger to blend the color in to your page. Baby wipes are helpful on this step for students to wipe their fingers off when they change colors. Make sure to color in the highlights of the eyes so they shine when we have the black light on! 

17. Next switch to neon tempura cake paint to paint the background of the crab. The tempura paint will resist anywhere that is colored in with oil pastels. The tempura paint cakes work similarly to water color paints. Get the paintbrush wet and swirl it around on the tempura cakes. These can be buildable, so if at first the paint is too light and you want it to be more vibrant, get more paint on your paintbrush. 

18. Next if you would like to add neon splatter to your crab, take turns taking your project to the spray station and one of the volunteers will help you spray your picture. The neon yellow stands out the best, but the other colors look great, too! (Volunteers make sure to shake up the spray bottles of paint as the paint tends to settle on the bottom). 

20. Way to go! You drew a crab! If time allows, close the shades in the classroom and turn the black lights on (they are either under the desk at the back of the classroom or they may already be plugged in around the room). Turn the lights off in the classroom and let the students see their crabs glow!