Watercolor Constellations Space Art Project

10.24.2012

After several weeks of just doing "the basics"-- usually Explode the Code, Math U See, and having T read from All About Spelling's "Runt Pig" series, we very casually started rowing again with our Five In a Row manuals.  I chose to row "Follow the Drinking Gourd" {affiliate link} by Jeanette Winter.  I wasn't sure how T was going to like this book, as it portrays a dark time in our nation's history-- slavery.  However, T enjoyed listening to every reading and asked several times for me to "sing" the song!  After listening to a version of "Follow the Drinking Gourd" on YouTube, I had it in my head all. day. long!  We also read, "Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt" by Deborah Hopkinson, which tells of a similar storyline to FTDG, but uses a quilt to reveal the path to freedom.

I have no pictures to share all that we did conversationally-- however, we did talk about:

  • the Underground Railroad, 
  • Geographic Directions (Big Dipper, North Star, Compass), 
  • Compound Words, 
  • Cut-Away view (art), 
  • Measure of time, and 
  • Star Groups/ Constellations.  
And we'll be sharing our Contstellation Activity with you today!

The only pictures I did manage to take during this row was of our Watercolor Constellation activity.  After reading, "Discover the Stars" by Cynthia Nicolson, I gathered white card stock, a white crayon, watercolors & brush, and star stickers.
I used the white crayon to make dots in the form of constellations all over the paper.


This was the *one* time I encouraged T to use black and watercolor all over the white paper to reveal the dots (stars).

See the 'Big Dipper'?

After T revealed the constellations, we put stars on our dots and then I drew lines to connect the stars so the constellations were more apparent.

For another constellation activity, check out our Constellation Viewers; learning about space is so much fun!