Puss in Boots Modified Up and Down

Usually, for my end of the year art show I just pick a project from each class that I think the whole class did particularly well on.  This year, inspired by Painted Paper, I chose a theme for all my art show projects. 
We are doing Fabulous Fairy Tales.  Every grade is getting a different tale to illustrate.  I've been reading the various fairy tales to my classes and it is shocking and sad to me how many students just don't know them at all.  Or they only know the Disney-fied version.

For example, Puss in Boots.  None of them knew him from anything besides Shrek and the spin-off movie.  They had no idea that the reason it's funny the king hires Puss to eliminate Shrek in the second movie is because he is an ogre slayer in his own story.  They all wanted to add swords and the poofy feather hat to their cats to turn him into the one from the Dreamworks movies, rather then appreciating the cat's cleverness in his original story.  *sigh*

One of my schools is K-6.  My other building is K-2.  Rather then reinvent the wheel, I just used the same Puss in Boots plan and modified it for different skill levels. 

In one building my 5th graders created Puss in Boots using a much more realistic face and body.  We studied prints and books of cats to match coloring.  We added fur texture by using watercolor pencil to draw lines and then did a wash of water over it to spread the watercolor pencil and fill space.  Cats were cut and glued to backgrounds, boots in different styles were added, construction paper crayons created the backgrounds.  You can certainly tell my "bare minimum" students from the rest.  As a final finishing touch I let them glue sequins onto the boots for decoration.  Upon further reflection, this was a bad move on my part, as 5th grade girls can not contain themselves in the face of sparkly objects.  There were more sequins on my cart's shelves, the floor and various girls then on the boots.  Live and learn.

Here are some examples of the 5th grade work:

For first grade at my other building I kept the lesson mostly the same.  We simplified the shapes used for the cat bodies, and stuck to only one simple boot shape.  I eliminated the sequins (no way I was picking all those things up off the floor again).  We used Crayola's Portfolio Series oil crayons for the cats.  I had forgotten with first graders that you have to specify that cats don't come in pink with purple polka dots.  So the first class's work is...very fantasy based. 

The second time I taught it we looked at the cat prints and books and this time I got cats that were normal cat colors but well...I call them Frankencats.  Orange Tabby arms on a grey tabby belly, with Siamese heads, and yellow tabby legs... They are interesting to say the least.

Finally, for the next two classes I managed to get across that yes, a cat can have stripes but probably not six different colored ones on the same body.  We used construction paper crayons again for the background.  Everyone was allowed to choose what color background paper they wanted (for both 5th and 1st). 

I think if I teach this again I'll stick to the first grade or just younger kids in general.  My 5th grade enjoyed it but I feel like the level of enthusiasm was much greater for the first.  Again, one of those live and learn situations!