Monday, December 18, 2017

5th Grade Northern Lights


Because they're so downright messy, I don't have students use soft pastels for very many lessons.  However, there's no denying how right they are for certain subjects.  Case in point: the Northern Lights.  I've seen several examples of lessons like this on Pinterest and finally decided to let my 5th graders give one a go.  As usual, they didn't disappoint!

We started by drawing simple overlapping hills along the bottom of our black 12x18 construction paper, leaving thick lines between the different hills to emphasize depth, and filling in the hills with white oil pastel.  In the same session, we used white acrylic paint and small brushes to make stars in our skies. 

In the second session, after a quick demonstration of how to apply and smear the soft pastels, and with a background video of different Northern Lights from around the world, students added the Northern Lights to their paper.  Yes, I'm biased, but I think these came out really nice! 




1 comment:

  1. Wonderful paintings. Thanks for sharing this post. To see real northern lights then plan a trip to see the northern lights.

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