We had discussed the concept of horizon lines for a while before starting this project. The students painted one half of a sheet of paper blue for a wintry sky and the other half they mixed up some gray for our snowy ground. In the next class I had them tear up each color into quarter sized pieces and glue them onto another paper. This took a while but ended up looking very neat. After students were finished with the tearing and gluing, we drew three trees on white paper.
We then had a discussion which was pretty mind blowing for the 1st graders. I put all three trees next to each other, the small, medium, and large, and asked them how we could arrange them on our background so that the trees would all be the exact same size. No one had any idea how that was even possible let alone how to do it. I then told the students to use their fingers to measure my head as they were all standing close to me around the demonstration table. After they had a good measurement, I had them go all the way across the room as far away as possible and measure my head again. The size of the measurement had obviously changed but when I asked the students if the actual size of my head changed, they agreed it hadn't. Light bulbs starting going on right..about...NOW! We realized that if we put the smallest tree further back, near the horizon line, it would look far back in the distance. The medium sized tree would go near the center of the gray snow and so on. Students glued them on and I talked to them about atmospheric perspective and how things that are far away become duller in color because there is more air in between our eyes and the object. We cut up three different green colors using the lightest colors for the furthest tree and so on. Last but not least, we added a polar bear for fun because they had worked soo sooo hard on this project. I was very proud and they all turned out beautifully.
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