Bird's Eye View Snowman

Kindergarten
2 Class Periods

Bird's Eye View Snowman, Kindergarten Art Lesson

Day 1:
This class period began with a very basic discussion about perspective.  We talked about how one can see the world a bit different depending on how you were positioned in this world.  As a class I had students stand up and quietly look around.  Thinking about all the things they could see.  I then had student lay on their tummies and look around the room from this perspective.  We discussed the differences.  I described to students how we call this perspective worm's eye view.  I then asked students to imagine what the opposite of worm's eye view would be.  With a bit of hinting it didn't take students too long to figure it out and once I explained this view point was called bird's eye view, one could see their excitement in their understanding.

We started with a 12 x 12 inch piece of black, gray or blue-gray construction paper and a 10 x 10 inch piece of white construction paper.  Using our scissors students were shown how to cut the corners off their white square to create a circle shape.  I informed students this would be the bottom snowball for our snowman which was then glued in place on the black construction paper.  A thin brown strip of construction paper was then glued across the large white circle to represent the arms of the snowman.

We then used a 6 x 6 inch piece of white construction paper for the middle snowball.  Corners were once again cut to form a circle and then glued on top of the brown strip.

Using a 5 x 5 inch piece of construction paper (various colors were set out for students to choose from), we once again cut another circle to create the scarf.  Students glued this on the middle snowball.  Scrap strips of the same color were created and glued in placed to represents the ends of the scarf.


Day 2:
On this day, begin with a quick review of bird's eye view.  A final snowball was created to form the head of the snowman.  This square is 3 x 3 inches.  At the same time we cut the final snowball, have students select a 3 x 3 inch piece of colored construction paper for the hat.  I show students how to place the two pieces of paper on top of one another and cut the corners.  Now they have two circles the same size!  Have students glue the white snowball head on the center of the scarf circle.  Then cut the colored circle in half to create the hat. Because they cut the circles at the same time, the hat should fit the snowman's head.  Show students how to glue this on half of the snowman's head.

The rest of the class period is used for snowman details.  We create a carrot nose out of orange construction paper scraps, draw details on our hat and scarf with markers and crayons and give our snowman a face using a sharpie marker.

Our final step is to take a Q-tip and dot the background of our composition with white tempera paint to create snowflakes.


Student Examples: