Sunset Silhouettes: integrating art with science, (or how a serendipitous meeting with Nancy Walkup turned this age old project on its head).

Last year, I realized that Nancy Walkup (Editor of School Arts, Elementary Art Educator of the Year, TAEA, 2010, former Elementary Director of NAEA and current director of NTIEVA, at UNT. Annnnd Nancy and Pam Stephens, authored "Bridging the Curriculum through Art: Interdisciplinary Connections", a GREAT book about appropriate art integration) lives 30 minutes from me. Thank you Facebook! So I invited her to my school...

...We had a blast...

...Which led to Nancy creating Summer Professional Development for the Art teachers in my district (Lewisville ISD). Nancy talked to us about Design Thinking and STEAM, with   paper marbling with silhouettes as our hands-on project. This is a project many elementary art teachers do at some point, as it is a great way to teach color theory and silhouettes (and all the cool things you can do with those). Check out Pinterest or deepspacesparkle-sunset-silhouettes for examples. Her inservice was awesome!

See here for my full post:  Summer In-service with Nancy Walkup. But here are the highlights:

STEAM inservice, focusing on density and physical properties.

Making sure the new Science TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) are integrated.

Nancy, doing a demo on paper marbling.

The resulting conversations, as we were all excited by the outcome...

Yes, it must be this brand and type. The chalk does not rub off when dry! Crazy!

Happy Nancy scraping chalk into trays of water...

Gentle swirls help demonstrate the objectives...

Place the paper on top, and pull for marble effect. Success every time! 
Even ghost prints were super cool.

So of course I had to try this with my second graders, who usually do a sunset silhouette painting to learn about color theory.

I bought 3 finger-painting trays and the Prang FreArt pastels. 

The kids rotated in quick groups of 3 while the rest of the class continued working on a different project. 

AHHHHHHHHHH SO COOL!

This year, I decided to introduce Architecture, especially along the horizon line. Second graders are learning about geometry and geometric shapes in math right now, so I decided to integrate this by incorporating complex and simple geometric shapes for buildings and windows.

We also talked about the importance of glowing lights, and negative space. 
Not going to lie, I was curious how second graders would handle negative space.

Here are some photo examples I used, focusing on cities with interesting architecture along the horizon line, and complex shapes. 

And here's where we talk about negative space...

Check out this fun:

They used scissors to gently scrape their colors onto the water. 

Heavy pieces sunk to the bottom, unusable. The fine dust stays on top of the water, for a time, so the kids have to work fast.

Once the paper is dry, the chalk does not rub off! So awesome.
The kids created their cities on black paper, and added details with white oil pastels and black fine point markers.

And here's the final product! So proud of these kids!

This student wanted to show the various neon lights of a city.

I think they understand negative space...wow.

Here a student wanted to show the "gleam and glow"(her words!) so she rubbed the pastel to get a glowing effect.

I love how robust and integrated this project has become, with just a few minor changes. Thank you Nancy!