I love teaching 4th grade students about positive and negative space! I think one of the reasons I love to teach it so much is because it seems to be one of those concepts that students REALLY "get"... it just seems to click! Normally for teaching positive and negative space, I have my 4th graders do a collage project, but this year, I changed it up a bit!
To begin the project, I gave my students one piece of 9x12 paper, a bunch of different types of art materials (crayons, markers, oil pastel, colored pencils, etc...), and one direction: Fill up the ENTIRE piece of paper with any patterns or designs you like!
Once the designs were complete, I taught students how to draw trees (on the BACK of their designs), demonstrated and had them identify positive and negative space on their trees. Each student then cut out their tree, making sure to keep all of the negative space pieces like a puzzle. On a piece of 12x18 paper, students started putting together their artwork by taping their tree "puzzle piece" on the paper first, making sure that the bottom, top, and one side of the tree/branches met the edges of the larger paper. Using a glue stick, they beta putting their designed paper back together like a puzzle, gluing their negative space pieces directly onto the paper. Once all the negative spaces were glued on, students took off the taped tree and glued the tree on the opposite side of the paper.
All students seemed extremely excited about the result and were proud of the process... even if it did take some patience!
To begin the project, I gave my students one piece of 9x12 paper, a bunch of different types of art materials (crayons, markers, oil pastel, colored pencils, etc...), and one direction: Fill up the ENTIRE piece of paper with any patterns or designs you like!
Once the designs were complete, I taught students how to draw trees (on the BACK of their designs), demonstrated and had them identify positive and negative space on their trees. Each student then cut out their tree, making sure to keep all of the negative space pieces like a puzzle. On a piece of 12x18 paper, students started putting together their artwork by taping their tree "puzzle piece" on the paper first, making sure that the bottom, top, and one side of the tree/branches met the edges of the larger paper. Using a glue stick, they beta putting their designed paper back together like a puzzle, gluing their negative space pieces directly onto the paper. Once all the negative spaces were glued on, students took off the taped tree and glued the tree on the opposite side of the paper.
All students seemed extremely excited about the result and were proud of the process... even if it did take some patience!