Hendrix Art
Menu
Classroom Blog
This project for third graders was inspired by the book Looking Down by Steve Jenkins. It is a wordless picture book representing a view of the world from above. The first page shows Earth from very far away- it's just a tiny dot! Then we move closer and see the texture of the moon, then closer to see shapes of the continents. Then roads and cities appear along with bodies of water like rivers and streams. Each turn of the page brings the viewer in even closer. Eventually we see a young boy on the sidewalk in front of his house. The next page shows a magnifying glass in his hand. The final page is a detailed view of the ladybug he's studying so closely. Each illustration is created with beautifully textured collage artwork. I chose this book to share with students because they are finishing up a unit on landforms- rivers, streams, islands, peninsulas, mountains, plateaus, and more. I asked the kids to list them all for me and they went on and on! I wanted them to understand how these landforms are represented on a map, and that we look at them from an aerial perspective- as if we're looking down from outer space. Each student (or pair of students) chose an image I printed out from Google Earth. They used collage techniques, similar to those in the book, to recreate the landforms in the image. Their goal was to represent the shapes and textures as accurately as possible. This was a one-day version of a similar project we did last year- the previous version involved painting and took about five class periods to complete. We just didn't have that much time this year! In our next art session, I'm planning to show students these artworks by sculptor Laura Moriarty. Her work connects really well to students' current learning about how the mountains and valleys of the earth are formed. We didn't have enough time this week, so I'll be sure to squeeze it in next time! Moriarty's wax sculptures are inspired by the folding and buckling and layering of the earth's surface. They are gorgeous!! Here's a video of the artist at work- the way she folds and layers the wax is designed to mimic the way the earth folds in on itself to create layers of rock.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2018
Categories
All
|