Today is President Lincoln’s birthday.  So this week we have been creating Lincoln inspired projects.  We began by reading Abe Lincoln’s Dream by Lane Smith.  In this story, a little girl leads Abe Lincoln’s ghost on a tour, showing him how things have changed since he was alive.  Along the way, they share a few jokes.  The illustrations are great and provided wonderful inspiration for our project.

We started out drawing Lincoln with oil pastel.  I did a demonstration on shading with charcoal.  I was really impressed with how well the kids were able to control the charcoal.  Next, we drew and painted our background using oil pastels and puck tempera.  Many used oil resist to create stars and fireworks.  I love the variety of backgrounds they created!  The final step was cutting out Lincoln, making his stovepipe hat out of black construction paper, and gluing him to our painted backgrounds.  I love that this project gave them a combination of directed drawing, shading skills, oil resist, and creative freedom.  This was a fun way to start this session!