Thursday, September 22, 2016

4th Grade STEAM Lesson Creating Topography Maps...


4th Grade is studying the watershed tables in Virginia and the major rivers. In art we look are were some of these rivers start and the path they take to the see. The blue ridge mountains and the Shenandoan Valley run through virginia so we are creating an artist eye version of a topographical map. 

After looking at real topographical maps we created our own mountains. Some of the students named their mountains and added in rivers and lakes.






As you can see on this map of the Shenandoan area the maps are very boring to look at from an artist's point of view. 

So we changed that! Using your creative mind and your artist eye, students painted their topographical maps in brighter more vibrant colors.
















My sketchbook and a Virginia Watershed map found on the Virginia State web page, as a Texan from Houston I am
trying to understand what a mountain is all about! If you have never been to Houston it is all at sea level and flat as a pancake.


A finished piece. 
(in the works----we are going to try doing a value change on the mountain rings and adding plastic wrap for texture and a salt resist in the rivers)

Another idea for painting the circles is Value Change.

Select one color and keep adding white to it until you get to the top.


 Somehow I was able to talk hubby in to taking us back through Middleburg....I love that place!!!



Next we looked at the work of Miguel Chevalier 
His "Magic Carpet" work reminded us of the colorful topographic maps we created so we 
created our Map/Magic Carpet inspired art out of Foam Sheets. 

You can bulk order this foam sheets form Dollar Tree. The link to order is HERE











They loved this part of the project!

An alternative to the foam paper which can get costly is bright neon paper.

Start from the bottom and build up your mountain.

Trace around your last piece before your glue it.

Then cut it out just slightly smaller than the tracing.




Another approach to this project is to add lifters between each color. We use cut cardboard strips.











No comments:

Post a Comment