Hidden Safari

This lesson let me explore the wonders of cool versus warm colors while looking for animals in a wild Safari. First I had to practice writing light, which was easy when I wrote upside down. Then we had the chance to choose our own safari animal, I decided to draw a giraffe. In order to hid the giraffe I had to draw him using a light blue pencil, without pushing to hard. When I had the giraffe perfectly drawn I had to hide him, so I took three warm colors, red, orange, and yellow to help him hide. First I took yellow and made a pattern all the way across my paper with little circle swirls. Then I took orange and make small circles on top of my yellow swirls, by this time my giraffe was starting to become hidden but I could still see him. Lastly I took red and made rectangles at different angles all across my page. The end result was it was really difficult to see the giraffe I had drawn. So I had to write three clues to what I had drawn. Then so I could see my giraffe I had to make special glasses so I could see him. I made glasses that had red lenses so that all the warm colors were washed away. When I looked at my giraffe with my classes I could spot him easily. Lastly I hanged up my art with the glasses nearby so people could guess what I had drawn then look through the glasses to see if they were right.

This lesson could easily extended into a social studies lesson about the safari or savannah. After the lesson was given the teacher could talk about the safari and what its temperature and terrain are like and why the animals that live their live there. They could also go into the great contrast of the safari to our cities.

Dot Day!

Dot Day allowed us to experiment with art in a simple form. I like that the story is showing that art can be practically anything and shows a child exploring their own style of art and is expanding on their creativity. After we watched the Dot Day video we had the chance to create our own Dot Day art, where we had to use a dot as our central theme but other than we were free to do whatever we wished. Watching the video was a great introduction to the project and is a great way to raise excitement about creating one’s own dot art. The project itself let us experiment with new materials and gave us a chance for free expression. I choose to go a simple route and worked mainly with oil pastels and watercolor paint. I had experimented a lot with making a dot using coffee filters, I eventually go the whole coffee filter wet and stuck it to a mirror where I painted it from. I enjoyed this lesson because it shows that most anything can be art and I think it could inspire younger children to try being creative even if they don’t think of themselves as artist. We were then able to create our own Dot Day display with all our dot day art we made. I enjoyed this part because it let me look at my art with a more critical eye and I had to watch how I wanted my art organized. It was fun making the display but it was much more fun to look at others displayed and there art. 

This lesson could continue into many other subject areas. For a younger grade this lesson could be connected to math when talking about shapes, what shape are our dots. The lesson could then be based on the shape of a circle and talk about how we made circle art. The dots could also be carried over by having them add dots, they could look at their own displays and could the number of dots they had total, and then the class could add the number of dots together to get a total number of dots they created that day.