Soft Pastel Self Portrait: First Grade

Looks like I completely underestimated the mess 26 First Grade students could make with vine charcoal and soft pastel and no sink. Was it worth it? I'm still contemplating that questions. We began our drawing with vine charcoal, and then the young artists went over their portraits with soft pastels. We tried very hard to match our skin color. The class made interesting observations abut the way the soft pastels looked on the paper, mainly they said that they looked like velvet and cotton balls. I love that, and couldn't have said it better myself. Students got a little disappointed to see their under drawing disappear, so for the final class I let them outline their drawings and color in the background with oil pastel.

Maybe it was worth the mess...