Ms. Beam Makes Art: Outer Space Watercolor Resists

This is a great two-class project that I'm doing with 3rd-5th grade at both my schools. The artwork below is by the 5th grade class at Our Lady of Angels.

On day one, we began with a quick review of the elements of art. Once we'd gone over all seven, we focused on the following "equation":

We started out with a small piece of paper. First we drew a circle (our shape). We identified a light source in the room (windows and overhead lights) and shaded our circle (value) to give it the appearance of a sphere (form).

Once the kids had this concept down, we named some spheres. The students came up with the biggest sphere they could think of - the sun! Students raised their hands to suggest additional parts of our solar system - the sun, the planets, asteroids, comets, etc. - and I wrote them on the board in order. Then I handed out watercolor paper, pencils, and craypas, and the students got to work drawing our solar system. I reminded them to include shading on each planet (indicating night and day as well as the light source) and to add white and yellow stars in the background - even if our solar system only contains one star, we can still see stars from other systems in the galaxy!

By day two, most students were finished or wrapping up their drawings. We began class with a brief science experiment - what happens when you combine oil and water? Students suggested several hypotheses... The two might mix. They might change color. They might create bubbles. The oil might float. The water might float.

As this (borrowed) image shows, there were some bubbles, but for the most part, the oil rose to the top. Having discovered that oil and water don't mix, we then looked at the names of the media we were using for our pictures: oil pastels and watercolors. I had students guess what would happen when we painted over craypas with watercolors.