Grade
4
Picture
Pie
We've all heard
about integrated learning where one type of lesson can morph into
another, so why not integrate Art and Math. Every kid knows that when
Mom offers him some pie he's not going to get the whole pie but a
fraction of it—better know as a piece of pie.
While browsing through a bookstore
some years ago I ran across a book called “Picture Pie” in which
the artist composed an amazing array of imaginative pictures using
circles and fractions of circles cut out of colored construction
paper. I bought the book and kept it in my library.
Fast forward ahead a few years. I'm
in Japan, setting up an art program and looking for ideas for lessons
that are a little, shall we say, left of center, educative, that
might capture the imagination of primary school kids and would be
doable. Kids this age are interested in their stomachs and the
natural world around them, especially living things like animals and
insects. Beetles are big in Japan where we have a rather large
variety of shapes and sizes.
I got the Picture Pie book off the
shelf and started looking through it again, this time thinking about
ways that I could adapt the technique to a project for my 4th
Grade class. It was obvious that you could tie the lessons to food
and Math through the idea of cutting a pie into fractions, and that
was how I introduced the project. Using large circles cut from
colored construction paper I demonstrated how you could cut the
circle into halves, quarters, eighths, even sixteenths and three-quarters.
When they understood the concept of
dividing the circle, which all were readily able to do having already
studied fractions in their Math class, I discussed and demonstrated
how to assemble the various shapes to form an abstract picture of
some familiar object—such as the baby chick on the right. The image
consists simply of a three-quarter yellow circle and three one-eighth
circle pieces, one yellow and two orange, a small black circle either
cut out of construction paper or simply drawn with a black felt tip
marker and a few lines with the marker to represent legs and a tree
branch.
Abstracting shapes of this nature is,
of course, very challenging even for the teacher. Consequently I
didn't expect a lot of creativity in this project and allowed it to
be an exercise in cutting, pasting, design and manipulating of the
shapes. I had lots of examples on display that the children were free
to copy and/or try to make their own pictures. They were required to
create six different pictures that were to be arranged and pasted on
large circles. The arrangements were then laid out on large sheets of
white drawing paper to represent a bunch of helium filled balloons tied together with
string as if they were being sold at a circus or fair or festival.
Looks good enough to eat—if you slice it right!
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment