Fifth grade recently completed a still life project built around the idea of Cabinets of Curiosities. These Cabinets were used mostly around the 1500's and were where people would put all kinds of interesting and strange natural items; skulls, rocks, fossils. . . So I brought in a collection of nature items for the students to draw; fossils, rocks, plants, bird nests, animal pelts (which were a huge hit).
Before getting started we talked about observational drawing, really looking at what we see. I like to tell students that someone who has never seen that item should know just what it looks like based on their drawing. We also really looked at the colors of an item: "Is a stick really just brown?" or "Is the stick brown with hints of orange and red?"
For two class periods I had students drawing and coloring the items. I set them up like my fruit still life, putting several items on each table and having the items rotate around the class. Students used color pencils to color and outlined them with black marker. (I know outlining is not the norm for a lot of still lifes' but they will be cutting the items out and this helps them really pop off the page.)
The final week we made our own "cabinets" from construction paper. Students then cut and glued the objects they drew on the shelves. Some students also chose to label the items.
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