Exploring Depth in the Depths with a Porthole Window

This project turned out so beautifully!  My third graders were introduced to several new concepts with this 3 week project.

Week One- Learn about tints and shades. Then students painted a large blue oval on the paper.  They mixed white with the blue and painted inside the circle, each ring gets progressively lighter until you get to the center.  Next add black to the blue and paint rings on the outside of the circle.  Each ring getting darker until you hit the outside.

Week Two- Learn about 5 ways to create depth.  Students did a warm up drawing worksheet where they practiced creating space by...

1)overlapping
2)placement on the page
3)size
4)amount of detail

5)boldness/paleness of color

Next we watched a video about jelly fish on Discovery Streaming and learned about what they look like and how they move.  Students drew jellyfish on their paper in white oil pastel using as many techniques for creating depth as they could.

Week Three- Watch another video on Discovery Streaming this time about coral reefs.  Have students continue to create depth, by using the 5 techniques, but this time add fish and coral to complete the picture.  Cut out the most interesting part of the picture and assemble into a porthole window. 

Newsletters

How many of you send out a newsletter?  How often do you sent it out and what is in it?  I keep experimenting with different formats and I keep refining to find something dynamic, but less time consuming.