One of my first grade classes is especially curious, and their teacher is very good at drawing this out of them and following their inquiries. Lately, I've been lucky enough to join them on some of these adventures. In their classroom reading time, they noticed an illustration in a book that depicted two people walking through the forest at night with a flashlight. They were very curious about how the artist created the illusion of the flashlight shining in the darkness. When I came to their classroom for art that week, they bombarded me with excited questions--"How did they do this? Can you show us? Can we try it?" As a teacher who is always happy to let my students plan lessons for me, this launched several weeks of exploration in art class Each class approached the challenge in different ways. (Teaching lessons in the same exact way for 8 sections of first grade gets a little boring.) The one similarity was that we read the same book--"Black Out" by John Rocco. The challenge was the same as well--create the illusion of light in darkness using warm/cold colors. This concept was an extension from their previous project of Warm Inside/Cold Outside paintings.
One class made small scale collages working with different kinds of papers and practicing layering to create depth. They were each given a 6"x9" piece of paper for a background. It was really nice to have them work small--I tend to let them always work big, but the change to a small scale project was refreshing. They also had to really focus on the goals of the project--lights and layering.
Two other classes were given more freedom to choose their own materials and subject matter. They met the goals of the project and they were also able to use previous knowledge about composition and materials used in prior lessons.
