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Make and Spin

Combine movement into active learning and art making in this lesson. Students learn and express concepts in radial symmetry and pattern as they create collaboratively.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Classroom White Board
  • Clear Plastic Adhesive
  • Mural Paper
  • Spinning Seat Toy

Steps

  • Step 1

    This lesson allows ease in team teaching and collaborating with other educators including physical education and instructional math colleagues.

  • Step 2

    As a class, view Terry Winters “Clocks and Clouds”. Ask students to describe what they see and imagine why the artist made this piece. What does Winters want the audience to know or do?

  • Step 3

    Ask students if this work reminds them of anything they have seen or done before.

  • Step 4

    Describe to students how this piece demonstrates mathematical concepts of radial symmetry and fractals. You can expand on this concept as you read “Swirl by Swirl” by Joyce Sidman.

  • Step 5

    Explain that radial designs have a central axis from which all lines radiate. In this lesson, students will be the center axis of their art. Set up outdoors or in a large, uncarpeted space. Set up includes unrolling mural paper on floor and spreading out several scooters or spinning seat toys.

  • Step 6

    After pairing students, having one as the axis for a radial design. This student will hold a Crayola® Ultra Clean Marker or Crayola Fun Effects Twistable Crayon™ in each hand and move in a consistent pattern as the other student twirls them about four to seven times creating a radial design. Students may choose to switch colors throughout the process. Each team member should get the opportunity to create.

  • Step 7

    At conclusion of activity, walk around the student work areas and observe completed class work. Discuss the uniqueness of each radial creation. What qualities of radial symmetry does this piece possess?

Standards

LA: Use the illustrations and details in a text to describe its key ideas.

LA: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade level topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

MATH: Reason with shapes and their attributes.

VA: Through art making, people make meaning by investigating and developing awareness of perceptions, knowledge, and experiences.

VA: Individual aesthetic and empathetic awareness developed through engagement with art can lead to understanding and appreciation of self, others, the natural world, and constructed environments.

VA: Engage collaboratively in exploration and imaginative play with materials.

Adaptations

Discuss how changing the speed of spinning can affect the outcome of the artwork.

Have students create a list of places they see radial designs in the world around them.

Have students develop a dance with rhythmic movements that mimic radial symmetry in some fashion.

Research Wilson Bentley and his development of a camera able to photograph snowflakes.