Outer Space Art Project: Watercolor Constellations

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!

I'd love for you to follow along so you never miss out on one of our fun activities we share at School Time Snippets!