Astronauts

Recently the science specials teacher at my school had StarLab set up and I will freely admit that I spent some quite time relaxing in there gazing at the fake night sky. This also meant it was a perfect time to create some space themed projects, not that I really need an excuse I love all things astronomy. Hopefully after these cool art projects and StarLab some of my kids have also caught the astronomy bug. I did an astronomy/space project with each grade but I have to admit that the astronauts made by my fourth graders are my favorite. I have seen a couple different astronaut projects on line but most of them had the students draw his/her face in the helmet. I wanted to take a slightly different approach. Instead of a face in the helmet we added the reflection of either the moon or the earth.

To begin I showed some pretty cool videos of real astronauts in actual space! I will say it completely blew some minds. We watched an astronaut eat in space, sleep in space, how to wash your hair in space, and what happens to a wet towel in space <-- (my favorite one). Once we got drawing students were given a large circle template to trace for the helmet. From there students were shown how to draw the rest of the astronaut suit. The following week we talked about how lights and shadows typically look in space, very strong raking light from one side. Students shaded his/her astronaut with black and blue colored pencils and then could add patches to the uniform.

The final week each student was given a black piece of paper and we went over how to draw either the moon or the earth. This part was done with chalk pastels and they could also add shooting stars and the like around the edge. Once this was completed we actually cut out where the face would be in the helmet and glued the black paper behind the astronaut. This resulted in the final look of the earth or moon reflecting in the helmet!