Objectives:
- introduce students to tints (color plus white)
- encourage students to really look at things (clouds come in all different shapes and aren't all white)
- introduce students to relief sculpture
- give kids opportunity to experiment with and create something out of different materials
Materials:
recycled objects such as bottle caps, tape spools, soda tabs, beads, string, toilet paper rolls, bubble wrap…
thin cardboard from cereal boxes or waffles
glue
paint
markers
Cloud books
Discussion:
1. Talk about the lines and shapes you can see in different kinds of clouds. You can also talk about the color of clouds and how you can always see more than one color in a cloud. Clouds often appear white (but are usually not JUST white) sometimes they are gray (white mixed with black) sometimes at sunset they are white mixes with yellow or red or orange, sometimes they look like white mixed with blue. Tell the kids if you mix white with a color its called a tint.
You can tell the kids they will be making relief sculptures of clouds (you can explain that a relief sculpture is a sculpture that you can’t walk all the way around.
2. Tell the kids they will be making clouds today. Demonstrate drawing a big cloud on the cardboard and then cut it out.This is a hard task but let the students own the process. Tell them it doesn't matter about the clouds looking "perfect" because every cloud is different.
Project
1. Dismiss kids to tables
1. Have students draw a large cloud on the unprinted side of the cardboard with sharpie. make sure they draw big (about half of a regular sheet of paper)
2. Have the students cut out the cloud. Have them write their names with Sharpie on the back.
3. Have students attach the recycled materials to the cardboard clouds with glue. When they have finished cutting you can pass out the materials and glue (put glue in the low trays so kids can dip the bottle caps into the glue and then on the cardboard)
4. We want to give the clouds a few minutes to dry so have the kids come back to the rug to read one of the cloud books. Then talk about how a tint is any color mixed with white. When we mix colors we start with the light color and add little bits of the darker color until we are happy with the color we mixed. You can demonstrate this. Tell kids to pick one or two colors we see in clouds besides white (like yellow, orange, pink, purple, and blue at sunset, grey on an overcast day, black for storm clouds, etc.).
5. Kids can go back to their desks - pass out a paper plate with white paint to every kid. Someone can go around and ask them what one other color they would like to mix with white and add that to the paper plate. give them a small drop of that color paint.
6. Kids mix their paint and paint the cloud
7. You can read the other cloud book to the kids who finish first while the others are finishing up.
Here are some lessons learned on the clouds unit:
ReplyDelete1) There are a bunch of cereal boxes to cut beforehand, but probably not enough for the later classes (especially since many of the boxes have writing on the inside). For cutting the boxes, consider taking them to the paper cutter in the teacher's supply room.
2) I did not find enough sharpies to set at each table to write the names on the back.
3) Encourage each student to make their cloud as big as possible, even though the cardboard is hard to cut with the kiddie scisssors.
4) We just dipped the objects in glue rather than using sticks or brushes (because we found no sticks and there weren't enough brushes). Messy on the table, but quicker.
5) If you have help, there is time to clean up the tables, wash brushes and trade out the materials while the book is being read before the painting portion.
6) For the painting, rather than individually distributing the colored paint to each student, we set plates of the colored paint on the table and let each student mix up their own on their white plate. Of course, the colors all ended up greyish-brown by the end.
7) Have the student set the art on paper plates to paint, and leave the art on the plates for the drying racks.
8) I expect the third class will need a refill of the recycled material.