Grade
4
Jigsaw
Puzzle
The objective of this lesson is to
create a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle on a medium heavy weight sheet of
white drawing paper that can be cut into pieces that will hold their
shape well enough to be reassembled into a completed picture puzzle
by other people. This was a project for two classes—about three to
four hours.
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| 3 vertical, 2 horizontal wavy lines = 12 pieces |
I first instructed the kids to divide
their papers into 12 irregular shapes. Using the whiteboard I drew a
large rectangle to represent their papers and demonstrated how to
estimate and divide the paper into thirds horizontally and quarters
vertically by drawing small ticks along the top and left sides of the
paper. Then they simply had to draw three vertical and two horizontal
wavy lines creating 12 pieces (count 'em) of different jig saw puzzle
type shapes that could be fitted together to recreate the picture.
When to lines were done they were traced with a black felt tip
marker.
The children were required to make 12
different pictures based on 12 words that I had written on the
whiteboard: circle, square, rectangle, heart, star, your name, a
word, a number, a flying thing, an insect, a plant, an animal. I
encouraged them to use their imagination, especially with the
abstract shapes, and try to go beyond drawing, say, a simple circle,
but adapt the circle to a real object that is round in nature: a
ball, an orange, the sun, etc. I also told them to take the shape and
size of each piece into consideration when designing the individual
pictures so that the overall drawing would be compositionally
interesting without too much “lonely” white space. When the
drawings were finished I would look at them and OK or suggest
improvements as necessary. Once OKd the drawings were once again
outlined with a black marker.
In the second class the kids
used color magic markers to color and design their pictures and then
cut them into 12 pieces along the wavy lines. For the rest of the
class period they exchanged puzzles and tried to make each others'
picture puzzles. It kept them pretty well absorbed for 10 or 15
minutes.
 |
| Jigsaw Puzzle |
To be continued...
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