Defying Gravity

 This year School 2's 3rd Graders are going to DEFY GRAVITY!  

 I got this concept courtesy of another blogger and decided to run with it!

I started out the students with an OuterSpace PowerPoint.  The students were really into space and had a ton to say about it!  

The students then got their papers and were told to draw five circles with oil pastels- some big, some small, some off the edge of the paper etc.  These would become their planets. 

 While looking at the planets, we all decided that no planet was just one color so the students were encouraged to blend the oil pastels and use multiple colors in all the planets.  Some students added rings for Saturn.  The students painted black watercolor over their paper and I came around and sprayed blue and violet liquid watercolor onto their papers (because even space isn't just black)

The following week I read the students a book about space and then the students drew their rockets.  I made up a step by step space ship drawing guide for the students that were less confident.  I stressed that the spaceship is made up of simple shapes such as ovals and triangles so if you can draw them, you can draw a spaceship.  While the students were drawing I called a few students at a time to the back table to paint glitter onto their background.  This would represent far off stars.

The students used watercolor pencils to color in their rockets.  Using the projector we compared realistic rockets to cartoon rockets.  The difference was the shading.  I demonstrated to the students some shading techniques.  

Now the students just have to cut out their rockets and add the fire.  The "fire"  is tissue paper.  The students used gold markers to draw their stars.  Oh!  I almost forgot the best part!  During each class, While I was pulling some kids back to do the glitter, I was calling kids up to take their Space Pictures!  I got these developed so the students could actually put themselves in space!!  Here are some of the student's work!  

 

 

 THe last step was of course, Writing!  I challenged the students to defy gravity; to do something that they think, right now, seems impossible.  I challenge them to achieve their goal by the end of  this school year.  The students wrote about how they were going to defy gravity, Why this was so important to them, what obstacles were in their way and how they were going to overcome them.  It was great to see that becoming a better writer, artist, and reader were among the top goals!