Your imagination gets moving when you look at the photography of Eadweard Muybridge. Create an original painting of your body in motion in the cold, wintry outdoors.

• 1.

  If possible, go outside with your classmates and run down hills or slide down a sliding board. Observe what happens. Make a video recording. How does the wind feel? What does it do to your hair and clothing? Where does the wind come from? Discuss wind currents and their formation, as well as the concepts of momentum and friction.

• 2.

  If you were going to draw yourself running, skiing, or sliding, how would you show motion? What hints could you give a viewer of your painting that your subjects were moving? Observe Eadweard Muybridge's photography and/or slow down a video so you can look at individual frames. Notice the small, but consistent, changes that occur from one frame to the next. How does the human eye see these continuous frames as a moving picture? Notice the blurring of detail in quickly moving objects when you speed up the images.

• 3.

  Cover a work area with recycled newspaper. On construction paper, use Crayola® Crayons to draw a winter scene of a person in action--sliding, skating, skiing, snowboarding.

• 4.

  Use Crayola Washable Paints and Paint Brushes to paint your picture. Blur the edges of the images by allowing the colors to mix together slightly when you paint them, or by using a wet brush to blend edges. Dry on a flat surface.

Standards

• LA: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
• LA: Read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.
• LA: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade level topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
• LA: Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.
• LA: Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; summarize or paraphrase information in notes and finished work, and provide a list of sources.
• LA: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
• LA: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• SCI: Obtain and combine information to describe climates in different regions of the world.
• VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of their experiences and ideas.
• VA: Select and use the qualities of structures and functions of art to improve communication of ideas.
• VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

Adaptations

• Possible classroom resources include: Poetry for Young People: The Seasons by John N. Serio; Winter's Gift by Jane Monroe Donovan
• Invite students to make several illustrations of their figure in motion and create a flip book. This can be done with a small tablet as a drawing surface. On each page, students draw a figure that changes slightly, in a continuous progression of motion, as observed in Murybridge's stop-action photography. Flip through the finished book to see the motion come alive.
• Ask students what winter sport is most appealing to each of them. Students investigate their sports, discovering how it began as a sport, who are currently the best athletes playing the sport, the weather conditions favorable to compete in the sport, what training and practice is required of the athletes, etc. Organize research into an electronic format for presentation to classmates.
• Working in small groups, students time downhill motions of blocks, toy cars, people, etc. Track the results in a chart form. Students consider how friction, weight, and angle of incline affect the speed of the figure.
• Students compose a short story or poem focused on their artwork. Word process the piece and display it with artwork.