You may have seen this lesson 'floating' around on pinterest lately. I absolutely love it! The original lesson can be found here at The Lost Sock. It is such a brilliant way to teach so many concepts - drawing 3D shape, observational drawing, depth and space, rainbow colours and pastel techniques. I always like a drawing activity that involves black paper too.
I gave my students a variety of round lids in different sizes to trace with a white pencil. We discussed that while bubbles are all different sizes, it also creates depth to have larger and smaller bubbles and to overlap some of the circles shows that sometimes bubbles get stuck together but also represent objects in the foreground and background spaces. It was also a good lesson in creating balance in an artwork.
I then demonstrated how to echo the shape of the circle's edge with a coloured oil pastel, how to layer up rainbow colours and then how to gently smudge the pastel to create a softer edge.
One of those great happy teaching moments happened during this lesson - whilst my students were working on these drawings I looked out the window to see one of our education assistants outside on the lawn with one of her students and a giant bubble wand! I quickly went outside and asked them to come in and blow bubbles all around my student's heads so they could observe the way the colours and reflections really look inside bubbles. Such a great coincidence!
I later realised that this lesson was originally intended for upper primary students, which made me very proud of these results from my grade 3 students. I would definitely like to try this lesson again in future with older students to see even more success and accuracy.
