Beautiful Pastel Butterflies
I had a delightful day with the five and six year olds from Thena’s class today. I revisited a lesson that I learnt many years ago when studying at Massey Univeristy. I have used this lesson a bunch of times and I am always chuffed with the learning involved.
To start the day we learnt about butterflies by reading a selection of wonderful books from our school library. Shirley, our librarian, is fabulous and is always keen to help me out when I need resources. Thanks Shirley! The students learnt that butterflies are insects and that their bodies are split into three (head, thorax and abdomen), that they have four wings which join to the thorax and that they have two antenna.
The students were very excited to start drawing their butterflies. They drew their outlines in yellow pastel first before adding simple patterns in a run of three hot colours. I showed them how to blend the pastels and asked them to try to keep the patterns symmetrical across the wings on their butterfly. The students then blended cold colours in the space left to finish their butterflies.
The students had a blast painting the grassy backgrounds for their butterflies to go on. After modelling how to blend paint on the paper, I gave the students green and yellow paint and let them get creative! It was interesting watching the various painting techniques that the students tried. Some did dabs, others did large swirls while others did twists with their brushes.
Not all of the paint was dry at the end of the day and some students didn’t get their butterflies finished so some of these artworks will be completed next term. The lovely finished artworks will be for our school-wide Calendar Art fundraiser. In the meantime, check out a selection of the finished pastel butterflies.
