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Auction - "My Favorite Animal" Block Prints


Back in 2013, Mrs. Kingsbury's Kinder students tried their hands at printmaking. They used ink, scratch foam, and brayers to make colorful prints of their favorite animals. The final artwork was framed and sold at the school's online auction. This project took about an hour of classroom time (and an hour of prep) and ran smoothly with two volunteers. 





SUPPLIES
  • Scratch foam (found at Swain's in Glendale or Blick in Pasadena)
  • Block printing ink in three different colors. Three 2.5 ounce tubes would be plenty for an entire kinder class (Blick in Pasadena; $7 each)
  • Brayers (The Arts Committee has 3 Speedball brayers)
  • Nice thick white paper (Art Closet)
  • Plain white paper
  • The children used their own pencils
  • Large pieces of paper to protect desks from ink splatters (from the Teacher Workroom near 1st Grade classes)
  • Extra paper towels or hand wipes
  • One large frame from Ikea (bought with money donated by the class) 

brayer and ink
This idea was inspired by the "City" Block Print project over at Glittergoods, which happens to come with a handy tutorial: http://glittergoods.typepad.com/glittergoods/2009/04/scratch-foam-block-printing-plus-a-few-bonus-auction-project-tips.html


PREP

 First, I cut the pieces of scratch foam to size, making sure I had lots of extra pieces in case the kids needed do-overs. I cut rectangles and squares, both large and small. I also made sure all the pieces fit within the frame before starting the project.

 Once I had my shapes figured out, I cut pieces of plain scratch paper in the same sizes. I wanted the kids to practice drawing their animals to size before making the real print.

 As a homework assignment earlier in the week, Mrs. Kingsbury asked the children to think about their favorite animals and then draw them on a worksheet. Having this little bit of extra practice was so helpful on the day of the project.


THE BIG DAY

 We took over two centers in the classroom. At the first center the kids reviewed their "homework" sheet with their favorite animal drawing, and then practiced drawing that same animal again on the scratch paper I had cut to size. After this, they were finally ready to do the animal drawing on the foam. Some kids didn't press down hard enough with their pencils to make clear indents in the foam, but that was easily fixed by a volunteer tracing over the drawings to make sure the lines were deep enough. 

 The kids then rotated through center two — the fun, messy part — where we set out plates of colored ink (we assigned colors to the kids). The little ones loved rolling the brayers back and forth to paint the foam pieces with ink. Tip: make sure the entire piece of foam is covered in ink so the final print has crisp edges. 

 Next, we flipped the foam pieces over onto the nice white paper and rolled over it with one brayer we had kept clean. This ensured the ink transferred evenly. The kids seemed genuinely intrigued as they slowly peeled up the edge to reveal their animal print!

 I trimmed the dried prints and spray mounted them on to the frame's poster board. Done! 

Later on in Second Grade some of these same kids explored scratch foam printing with art teacher, Brooke Sauer. Who knew they would get to do this fun technique twice!

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