With a short week and the beginning of a new year, I had the chance to visit Neola Elementary School and create a collaborative lesson with Mrs. Parry. Her class had been studying about George Washington Carver, so we decided to spend some time exploring the peanut plant. When I arrived, her students told me everything they knew about George Washington Carver. Did you know that he invented over 300 products using peanuts? Mrs. Parry's students knew more about George Washington Carver than I did! We decided that it would be fun to explore peanuts and how they grow. This lesson ties in nicely with the 2nd grade science core. We made sure that none of the children had peanut allergies before we started the next part of the lesson.
To start our scientific evaluation, we opened a bag of peanuts that were still in the shells. We looked at the peanuts, broke them open, felt the texture and then we drew them. We learned that peanuts are a LEGUME, not a nut.
After we had spent time observing peanuts, we decided to start drawing them. We practiced drawing a peanut with pencil on manila drawing paper. We drew curly roots and lots of peanuts underground. We drew the plant and flower above ground with a cutaway view. Once we had all practiced, we did our final piece of art using oil pastels on 80 lb. white art paper.
Finally we painted our picture with watercolors, brown for the earth and blue for the sky. The results were very lovely and the children were thrilled.
The inspiration for this painting came from this website: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/pages/peanutplant.shtml
1 comment:
What a cool project! I love how you incorporate art into everything! :)
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