Mythological Creatures

Fourth graders learned about the mythologies of different cultures and how these stories were often used by ancient peoples to explain the world around them. I thought it would be fun to focus on some of the fantastical creatures from these mythologies. We read from Dragons, Dragons and Other Creatures That Never Were (Eric Carle) and students created their own version of a mythological creature in the style of Carle.

Fourth graders used their research to write poems about their creature. They  also created a constellation of their creature using glow in the dark ink and were excited to present their work to the class!

Listen to Jelonnie's presentation on the Centaur.

Listen to Whitney's poem about the Yeti.

Painted Worlds

This was one of the first lessons fifth graders worked on at the beginning of the year and was intended to give them some art history background. The project was to select a painting from a modern art movement and transform it from a 2D space to a "3D" diorama. Students had to pay special attention to the space in their painting while creating their foreground and backgrounds. They also tried to emulate their artist's style in parts of their work. Fifth graders seemed to really enjoy using the oil pastels to blend their colors and were also excited to use reductive methods to scratch away and add detail. At the end of the lesson, students were organized in groups based on which art movement their original painting was from. The groups then worked collaboratively to arrange their movements into a visual timeline and to present the main ideas of their art movement to the class.

* This lesson was partially inspired by this fantastic lesson by the very talented Ruth Chung. 

 

Chameleon Collages

Sorry for the delay in posting. Winter break always seems to go by so fast! Here's a start on all that I need to catch up with!

After reading "A Color of His Own" by Leo Lionni, kindergartners created their own chameleon  using collage and mixed media. They learned how to use shapes and outlines to help sketch out each part of their drawing and also had to decide what special colors to use for their chameleon. I was excited to see some students match their chameleon's color to what was in their background - which showed what they had learned about chameleons in the story!