One Day Art Exercises - 3rd Grade

Original line makes up the top of the jet - a zigzag line.

It was the day before spring break, my last class of the day and I didn't have the heart to pop in a movie, so instead I challenged my students to a creativity battle.  Okay, so it wasn't so much a battle - but I was using dramatic flair from both "Iron Chef" and "Chopped".  I explained that the students would be getting a piece of paper with ONE line on it and they were to make it into the most creative picture they could - adding lots of detail.  They only had 30 minutes to do this - time starts now.

The kids took off.  All the lines where different so it made it difficult for students to judge their own work against a neighbors.  I had only one student struggle to start - but after a few suggestions from me, the table started to fire out their own ideas and that sparked an idea for the student and they too were in the game.

I was honestly quite surprised by the creativity.  I thought I'd have a lot more students resorting to easy pictures of people and snowmen.... boy was I wrong.

A mouth with a peanut.

A rhino.

This turned out to not only get a great exercise in creativity, but problem solving and composition.  When students were done drawing they colored with crayons and took them home!

I will keep this project to do again - maybe I'll even make it into a full lesson/unit!