x-ray painting and poetic verse

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Home : 2005 : June : 4

x-ray painting and poetic verse
By Suezie

My grade 5 and 6 students love this activity.

I have a calender of Australian X-ray Painting that I show the students (you can find pictures on the internet). We talk about how the pictures show animals and nature, swirls
and filling in the page with dots. (I think there is a great description of this on Enchanted Learning Website).
I challenge them to draw a animal/nature object on black constuction paper (approximately 5 by 6 1/2 inches -- a quarter of a piece of construction paper). After putting their name on the back, they fill in the paper with dots of liquid paint to "paint" the picture. I use

little dixie cups to put a little dab of paint in, and each child needs only 1 or 2 colors at a time.

The children use the end of the paintbrush handle or a sharpened pencil to make the dots. The pictures are beautiful and most of the children want to do a second one. Some children like to start over once they have figured out the technique. Sometimes I will play classical kids music while they work. It is amazing how much patience they have for this, even my ADHD kids.

That's the art part. When most of the kids are finished, I share the book, "What a Wonderful Day to Be A Cow". It is full of descriptive action words and similes. There are even some metaphors that my brighter children can pick out quickly. I reread and stress these parts and explain the meaning of poetic verse and figurative language. They also notice the pattern -- each page ends with "What a wonderful day to be a ....

When I am halfway thru the picture book (the cow page - June) I ask them to start thinking about some words that would describe their animal/nature object. I quickly give a few examples based on some of the x-ray painting I showed them or what they have done. I then read the rest of the book, stressing the strong verbs/similes.

Lastly, they are asked to use poetic verse to describe their picture ending with the pattern "What a wonderful day to be a ..." It helps if they brainstorm strong action words and desciptive phrases before they actually write the sentence. Most of my students know that an author might have numerous/different rough copies because choosing the best one.

Eg. xray painting a flower (one of my students wrote this after using a thesaurus to find more descriptive words)

"The delicate petals bend their tips toward the crisp blue sky, searching for the moisture to fill their inner core. Leaves wave their happiness. Colours burst from the rich garden, creating a rainbow for the birds floating above. What a wonderful day to be a flower."

This is just one of my favourite activities!!! Parents love the results.