Tin Tooled Pirates for 3rd or 4th Graders

During the past few weeks I blogged about tin tooling and it was a very popular series, I thought it might be interesting for many of you to see a project that could easily be completed with children.  This is a very popular project completed with 3rd graders although could easily be used for upper grade students as well.  Look back at the previous posts to see the techniques that were outlined. 

AARRGGHH and avast me matey are terms that I hear frequently when I begin our Pirate Tin Tooled Portraits.  Pirates are one of those themes that children always love and this project is no exception.  We began the project by reading a selection of pirate poetry from the book Shiver Me Timbers! by Douglas Florian and learned some “pirate” vocabulary.  In no time at it sounded like I had a class full of pirates. 

Another wonderful reference book is Everything I Know About Pirates by Tom Lichtenheld which is a humorous portrayal of pirate life and habits.  The pirates in this book are shown with a squared off jawline, missing teeth, assorted jewelry, and interesting headgear.  Using this book we discussed pirate gear and fashion and designed a pirate face drawn using the squared off jaw look, including the shoulders, and adding an interesting assortment of pirate paraphernalia.  We drew these pirate faces on a 9”X11” piece of manila drawing paper which will be transferred to the same sized piece of 36 gauge tooling tin.

Tin Tooling is a media that I like to expose my students to every year and one that they look forward to.  It is a reverse embossing process where we work using a plastic stylus on the back of the tin, turning it over to complete the refining process on the front.  We then added texture and a border pattern using a variety of tin tools and colored them with Sharpie Markers.  You can see some of my students working on their tin projects in various stages in the attached photos. Look at previous posts to see photo examples of the tin tooling process.   

As stated before tin tooling is a technique that I like all of my students to have the opportunity to experience and begin working with students as young as 2^nd grade, consequently by the time that they have reached the intermediate grades they are very familiar with the process.  In 4^th Grade I like to introduce my students to a variety of tools which will help them further understand the art element of texture.  We use tools which are produced for tin tooling designed by the Ten Second Studio Company and produce an interesting array of textures.