Produce Portraits

1. Our bodies need the vitamins in fruits and vegetables to help maintain a healthy weight and fight disease. Organize students into small groups. Students work as a group to brainstorm a list of as many fruits and vegetables as possible. Which are the class favorites?
2. Artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo created portrait paintings using fruits and vegetables. Student groups research Arcimboldo’s life and works. Provide a vareity of text and electronic resources to assist students in this investigation. Encourage students to examine how he uses simple items to create more complex forms. What artists has he inspired?
3. Individual students create their own Arcimboldo-inspired self portraits. Use Crayola® Crayons to add facial features, hair and other details using fruits, vegetables and other healthy food choices. Look at Arcimboldo’s paintings and real produce as inspiration.
4. Use a variety of creative coloring techniques when making the portraits. Use crayon pressure variations, outlining and creating new colors to add dimension to the drawings.
5. Share portraits with small groups of classmates. Students discuss how they incorporated learning about Arcimboldo and his artwork to create their original portraits.

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: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

MATH: Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories. Solve one- and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs.

SCI: Analyze data to describe how humans, like all other organisms, obtain living and non-living resources from their environment.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Use appropriate resources, data sources, and geographic tools to generate, manipulate, and interpret information.

SS: Identify and describe ways family, groups, and community influence the individual's daily life and personal choices.

VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.

VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

Classroom resource: Hello, Fruit Face!: The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo by Claudia Strand

Students work in small groups to investigate what nutritional value fruits and vegetables provide them daily. Encourage students to design a plan for eating enough of both daily.

A healthy diet includes more than just fruits and vegetables. Students research more about nutrition and a healthy diet for themselves.

What types of foods do people eat in different parts of the world? Students select a country other then their own and investigate the cultural cuisine. Organize findings into an electronic format for presentation to classmates.