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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Magazine Bowls

Great end of year project. The library is getting rid of magazines (score!) and the bowls can be any size, which means...no early finishers!




The other thing I like about this is the ability for students to easily prep their own materials after finishing the current project. It's the time of year where they are wrapping things up and are at various stages. I know as soon as they finish they can either tear pages out of magazines or start folding magazine pages. If you'd to do this project without having to write your own three-session lesson plan, you can get mine here. Updated March 2019 to include a video demonstration.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Toy Story Reveal



Fourth grade finished their toy story perspective drawings.
The results were remarkable and the students really enjoyed this approach to the projects I have tried in the past. Definitely a keeper.



 I love the option with the jenga tower for my gifted students to challenge themselves by removing a few pieces.

If you'd like more details on how this lesson is presented, this plan is available for download here.
Original post here.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Perspective Lesson Inspired by Toy Story

I've been teaching perspective just about the same for the past ten years and sadly, I've been teaching it the way it was taught to me. Which isn't always a bad thing. Except for when it's boring and not relevant.

This year, I'm trying a new perspective lesson with my 4th graders. They are going to draw a box from worm's eye view. So I had them start with some homework. They had to promise me that they would put a toy that is a rectangular prism or cube on the floor and lay on their belly and look at it. They were supposed to rotate the object so that a corner, not a flat side was the closest thing to their face. Most were very excited to brainstorm a list of things that could potentially fall into this category.


I gave myself some homework as well, and set up a few photos at home to display on the board during the next class. For some reason they really love knowing that I have a daughter just about their age. They think it's funny that I borrow her toys and things for our lessons. So I knew this would be a crowd pleaser.


Today we started following the steps to creating the box using two point perspective. I reminded them that they were working like an animator from the film "Toy Story" and they were drawing not what Andy would see, but the little green army men. I had them imagine what they could see. Could they see the top of the jenga blocks? (NO!) Could they see out the window? (NO!) Could they see the outlet (YES) the carpet? (YES). The jury is still out, but I felt like more of them were with me, and had a clear picture in their minds of where we were going. So, ah....homework for the win?

** Update ** Lesson plan with two demo videos now available.