We have been in a bit of a space frenzy around here lately. We had the wonderful experience of Endeavour's fly over several weeks ago before making its way to its new home at The California Science Center in LA. And my daughter was so excited about her studies with the solar system, she brought home her science text book to show me everything she was learning. (Thanks to her Fantastic 5th grade teacher, Ms. Long for igniting her curiosity and enthusiasm in exploring the world of space and astronomy!)
So when I stumbled on this fantastic art lesson from Make It....a Wonderful Life, I knew I had to give it a try. I showed my students pictures from the Hubble website. We talked about Supernovas (exploding stars) and Nebulae (clouds of dust and gases in space). They were as impressed as I was with how incredibly beautiful and amazing these discoveries are. Treat yourself and visit the HubbleSite gallery here.
The Endeavour fly over - What a treat!
My experiment for the lesson
This artist wanted to show an exploding supernova
We created our pieces on black construction paper with chalk pastels. We used the side of our pastels and blended lightly to create the look of the feathery nebulae. Stars were added with acrylics using toothpicks as well as splattering with brushes. They could choose to add cut planets that were shaded with dark on one side and light on the other to give them dimension.
Beautiful work. I'm presuming the planets are cut out and glued on after? A lovely hard-edge effect against the soft nebula background :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Elizabeth - I will edit to make clearer.
DeleteLove! Can't wait to research this and try it out!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad our artwork inspired your artists! Thanks for sharing yours. :D
ReplyDeleteThanks once gain to you and your students for inspiring us!
DeleteSo beautiful, Mary! I wish you would consider making and selling DVD's of these lessons. I'd buy them!
ReplyDelete:)Pat
Thanks so much Pat...greatly appreciated!! :)
DeleteThanks for the great Hubble website reference -- it was new to me and I know I will use it in class. Wasn't the Endeavor fly-over spectacular!! I was so moved that I forgot to take out my camera to capture it!!!
ReplyDeleteChristie - Isn't that website amazing?! Actually, the Endeavour pic is courtesy of my sister-in-law. On the morning of the fly-over a woman from NASA was responding to a reporter's question about not having a camera with her. She said people make the mistake of trying to capture things with the lens of the camera and miss the true experience.She said there would be thousands of images and videos to Google later.I took her advice, and just experienced it. Glad I did!
DeleteWhat a great assignment! Being an astronomy fan myself, I think this would be a great project for my students. Brilliant idea!
ReplyDeleteAwesome! This would be perfect for my Grade 6 class. :)
ReplyDeleteDanielle @ http://artroomwithaview.blogspot.ca/