Everyone has a story to tell, and art is tied to literature through illustration. If you need to tie language arts into your lessons, this is a great way to do so that engages students. 

Students began with a sketch on copy paper. They divided it into nine spaces with a little guiding line to remind them that the story needs to go in a spiral. I encouraged older students to try and make their story transition smoothly from frame to frame so that the completed open image would be more cohesive. 

I had my students to tell a simple story in nine steps. It could be about a life experience, an adventure, or something made up. If I was doing this in a classroom setting, I might want to have students research and illustrate a  poem that has a few stanzas like "The Jabberwocky," or illustrate a portion of a story in 9 steps. 

The story reveals it'self as the paper unfolds. With a little trial and error, I found out how to prepare the paper so it would fold properly. The diagram below shows how a spiraling 1/4 inch margin (about 1 cm) needs to be cut from a piece of paper. I used 18 x 24 inch paper as it was easy to divide in thirds.

The red area needs to be cut out leaving space to accommodate folds.
​A finished cut example is below. The ones I gave students did not have a dotted line. That was just for this example.

Once the paper has been cut, the video shows you how to fold the paper.

Inspired by the work of Michael Paulus, Disney, and figurative art, I created this mash-up with the help of my co-teacher Colin Temple. (His example is above). This lesson was done with a mixed group of eighteen students ages 7 though 16.

Every year in art camp, our most popular week is cartooning. We try to keep it interesting by approaching it in various ways. Some you'll find on our 2D art page. This time I was inspired by Mr. Paulus' image of Hello Kitty as a skeleton. My twist was to have students do it as an animation cell a la Disney.  

We printed images of popular cartoon characters, and covered them with overhead plastic, tracing their outer contours with Sharpie marker. Students then did a sketch of what the skeleton might look like on thin copy paper so as to see the lines underneath. We had several print-outs of skeletons available so they had a visual reference. Depending on the age of the student we encouraged a level of detail they were able to handle, and to draw the bones as shapes that could be colored in, and not lines.

When the sketch was approved, the skeleton was also drawn on the same plastic with sharpie. Their name was added so as to know what side was the front. (Important!) Once done, students would paint in the bones FROM THE BACK of the plastic. This way the bone contours were not ruined by the paint. We used enamel paints from Nasco, but acrylic paint, and even gesso will work.

Those that finished early created backgrounds for their animation cell; a place for their character to exist. Time will determine how deeply you cover the skeleton. It can simply be a visual reference as we did in our camp class, or you could have a hand-out with formal names of major bones and require students to learn them. Many Youtube resources can be found by searching "​skeletal system for kids." Pick the best for your age level as a way to begin your unit.

​More resources on the links to the left and HERE. My skeletal reference image was from HERE.