Halloween Art Project

I taught my grade 2 classes the song, “The Thing that Isn’t There” from the grade 2 “Share the Music” text. It’s a fun, spooky song to sing and the kids just loved it! It also provokes discussion around the scary things that we can create in our imaginations – i.e. a monster under the bed, something hiding in the closet, behind the shower curtain, etc. Our minds – especially young minds – are extremely creative and we can scare ourselves silly with things that aren’t even there at all.

I thought of a fun art project that really goes along with the concept of thingsthat “aren’t there.” I gave each of the students a sheet of white paper (I wrote their names on them in pen first) and a white crayon. I had the students draw a picture of “the thing that isn’t there” from their imagination. You can only see their creation if you look really, really closely. At first glance, it looks like nothing is there.

On another day, I brought in water colour paints and set up paint stations around my music room. I handed back their seemingly “blank” creations, and we painted over top of the crayon. The water colour paint resists the wax, and pulls away from it. In other words, the colour sticks to the paper where the crayon is not, leaving a clear picture of what they drew. It’s like magic! The students thought it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. And now they will never forget the song they learned!