Third grade just finished their snowmen ‘snapshots’. I found this great lesson at Mrs. Knight’s Smartest Artists.

Third graders drew snowmen from four different points-of-view. Allow three 40-minutes classes.

Materials:

• sketch paper
• pencils and erasers
• white construction paper, 12″x18″
• Sharpie
• viewfinders
• colored markers, thin-tip and chisel-tip

Day 1:

We looked at all the student examples at Mrs. Knights’ blog. Students learned some new photography vocabulary to describe point-of-view:

• zoom in/close up
• zoom out
• profile/side view
• 3/4 view
• viewfinder
• crop

The third graders sketched their snowmen in all the points-of-view on a sheet of copy paper. Then they moved their viewfinders over the snowmen drawings to crop the picture.

Days 2-3:

Students folded their white construction paper into quarters. Using pencil, they drew the snowmen from four different points-of-view, one in each quarter. They went over their lines with Sharpie, then erased.

Students had to pick a unique color  (or pattern) for each section. I modeled coloring with the markers, and emphasized neatness. This was a ‘no spaghetti’ (no scribbling) project. Some kids still need the reminder!

Third grade results:

This was a very successful project. I heard a couple of kids say they thought it was the best art project they ever did. Please check out Mrs. Knight’s fabulous post – her student examples are great.