Teaching Art to Kids - Learning about Foreshortening

As you might know already, I homeschool my three short people.  =0)  I love to teach hands on learning activities and do all kinds of creative things with them, it just sometimes gets put on the back burner for the more important stuff like math and English (yawn) LOL!  However, my kids won't let me put our week of art during  spring break on the back burner.  Our homeschool group hires an "artist in residence" for a week.  I thought I would do something a little different today and show you one of the lessons the kiddos learned about foreshortening - you know, making thinks that are closer look bigger!

The kiddos were told to sit with their legs and arms straight out in front of them.  What would that look like if someone was standing on the other end of the shoes and hands?  Yep, you guessed it, their shoes and hands would be bigger!  Now, how do you show that on paper?  Yes, you could spend all day with this group of children that were kindergarden through 3rd grade letting them try to draw two shoes that were the same size - oh yeah  and then the hands.  Nope, you let them trace their shoes and hands, talking about where your shoes would cover your hands, and what  you would see behind the shoes and hands.  Here is what I mean, give it a try yourself, its fun!

Take off  your shoes, angle them out on a large piece of poster board and trace around them.  Now think about it, if your legs are sticking straight out in front of you, your feet kind of turn out, don't they?   Now trace your hands as if they were behind your feet - your shoes will cover up some of your hands won't they?  From there, draw a circle for your head, remember its going to look smaller than your feet and hands, that's called FORESHORTENING.   Then you can draw your arms, and legs (angle those legs, bigger at the bottom, smaller on top - more foreshortening). 

One of the exercises they had to do, was to draw the bottom of their shoes - cute huh?  This taught them to focus on lines and shapes, paying attention to detail instead of just drawing what you think should be there.

Here is a picture of what my girls' drawings looked like before they were colored:

They then could get wild with the color, watercolor that is!  My girls loved this.  They experimented with how water color travels and mixes and what salt will do when sprinkled on it.  You've got to try the salt - way cool!  The key here - let your kids do it!!!  Don't try to have them make it too perfect!

Ok ladies - get to teaching and having fun with art with those kiddos - and yourself!

What did you think?  Would you like to see more of what we did with art week?

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