Castles from Once Upon a Time...Previously.

Kindergarten-3rd graders began this project after our artist in residency from Ireland came and did a production with our entire school.  We looked at many impressive castles from Ireland as well as some various art works of castles.  We discussed perspective and proportion (which some had a great concept of…and some not so much.)   One of our key discussions was the shapes and forms we saw as we observed our castles.  The students drew their castles with black sharpie then used water color to paints. 

Here is a link to the little power point I made with examples and a how to draw an easy castle:
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/huskeyj72501-1347962-castles/

My favorite part, of course, was the book and writing piece I found to go along with it.  Fairy Tales were one of the key places mentioned when I asked students to make connections with where they had heard of or seen castles before.  As I looked for books with castles I came across a variety, but this one caught my eye.  There is a small castle in the book if you look…but not one that you want to be inspired by for creating a castle.  However, I loved the story.  The book Previously is kind of a backwards chronological tale of a mixture of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters and how they intertwine with each other.  Each page begins its lines with “previously” which led to a great writing piece.  I had my students look at their castles and decide what “previously” might have happened in their castles.  As each of them told me I typed their sentence on the computer so they could view it on the projector and edit my errors as needed then we printed them off so they could cut and paste on their art work.  Love love love these!

Falling for Rapunzel is another really cute book we used.  I also had several illustrate her long hair coming down the tower.