Paul Goble

This week's Storybook Art lessons began with




It was a perfect tie-in to our lessons about Light in Science last week (reflection). This activity was VERY challenging. Of all the Art projects we have done this year, it was by far the most complex. I would say the entire lesson took about an hour and twenty minutes. First I read the story (of course). Then we folded the drawing paper in half horizontally and students sketched an animal of their choice. It was cutting out the animal without cutting through the fold line that presented the first major obstacle and many children had to draw and cut out two or even three animals before they did it properly. The trick: don't cut between your animal's legs.

Next, they unfolded their animal plus its shadow and had to trace the reflected animal onto the blank shadow. This was HARD. Keep plenty of erasers handy and don't pass out your fine line markers too soon. After outlining with the fine line marker and gluing down the animal/reflection, the coloring began. We used colored pencils. Color your animal and color its reflection to match. The final challenge was that some children went ahead and colored in the lake blue (the fold line is your water line), then realized they wanted to add extra elements above but didn't have room to reflect them below. So I suggest that you put coloring the lake blue as your final, and optional, step in the activity.

My students complained about a third of the way through that it was too painstaking and hard (this was the cutting the animal without cutting through the fold line part) but once they saw how beautiful the finished projects were, they appreciated the time it takes to follow the directions step by step.

Other Art projects this week (which I will write about) were

The Little Houseby Virginia Lee Burton

Harold and the Purple Crayonby Crockett Johnson

Grandmother Winterby Phyllis Root