Did that get your attention? How about this?
The Science teachers at my school often have the kids create drawings about what they are studying. One of them asked if I wanted to coordinate and have my third graders do more observational drawing. I borrowed these fun scientific specimens and some plants from the school greenhouse for my students to draw.
If you want to buy some of your own specimens, they are not cheap, but once you have them you can use them for many years to come. Here is a bug set and a sea life specimen set I found on Amazon.
We first folded accordion books. See this tutorial from Making Books with Children. The students picked some of the specimens to draw. They used colored pencils, watercolor pencils and thin Sharpie pens.
To make the covers, we marbled cardstock and glued them to the front and back of the books. I had a few ancient marbling kits that I wanted to use up. We mixed up the powder that came with it and used acrylic paint. Since then, I’ve learned that you can use simple liquid starch to marble paper. Check out this tutorial from I am Rushmore. Next time, I will definitely try that as it seems like it would be easier. I think the kids did a great job and they really spent a lot of time observing the details of the specimens.
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Thank you for sharing! Great ideas once again! I am not an art teacher but your projects are always doable and cross-curricular for classroom teachers. This project is great to share with parents! The students should be very proud of their work!
Thanks Diane! What do you teach? It is a great project to connect with Science and to develop observing skills. Thanks for writing!
Outstanding lesson! I love it when I see STEAM projects like this. I also love doing paper marbling with my students. Thanks for sharing such great work!