Green Cities

In Art Through Children's Literature we read The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton.  In this Caldecott Medal Winning storybook, a little house lives happily in the country.  Personification is used to express how the seasons come and go, delighting the little house.  One day a road and houses are built in the little house's countryside home.  Soon a whole city is constructed and the little house is upset by all the noise of trains, subways, cars, and bustling people.  She's disappointed by all the smoke that ruined her peaceful country home.

 After reading this story, we discussed how cities need to be built for future populations to live and visit.  We talked about some ways we can make this cities "greener" and came up with ideas for what future cities might look like.  Students came up with fabulous ideas, like underwater transportation, flying cars, and climate controlled biomes for people to live in so they don't have to travel to warmer places to vacation. 

Here's how we did it:

Une:  We drew our green cities on watercolor paper  with pencils (could jump right into black sharpies, but I wanted kids to spend the time making extraordinary details).  Imagination was encouraged and the use of groundlines, waterlines, buildings, transportation...etc was discussed.

Deux: I pulled out the tube watercolors, which I usually use with the older students, in various shades of green, yellow, and blue watercolors to paint them. I showed the students how to mix colors then dared them to create as many shades of green, turquoise, lime, chartreuse, aqua, and teal they could! 

Trois: Once dried completely, we finished these paintings by outlining all our lines in black sharpies. 

Eddie

Gaia

Victoria

Nicholas

Megan

Adric

Aidan

Chloe

Luke

Maddy

William

Yula