Use Literature to Teach Color, Texture, Pattern
The Legend of Spookley The Square Pumpkin Art Lesson Plan
Oct 12, 2008
Elementary students learn about the art elements of color and texture in an art lesson and activities relating to the book The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin
Use the book The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano [Sterling Publishing, 2001] to teach elementary children about the art elements of color and texture, including how to make patterns.
Objectives
- Students will identify, describe, and sort colors into categories such as primary or secondary and warm or cool.
- Students will identify and describe different kinds of textures.
- Students will identify patterns as repeated lines and/or shapes.
- Students will use art materials to represent different colors, textures, and patterns.
Lesson Focus
- Pass around a smooth orange pumpkin. Discuss its color (orange) and its texture (smooth). Discuss how texture is both how something's surface looks and how it feels to touch.
- If possible, pass around other pumpkins with different colors and textures. Otherwise, display photographs of different pumpkins. Help students identify the colors and textures in each case.
- Begin a list of words to describe different textures, such as rough, shiny, and bumpy.
Introduce, Identify, and Discuss Color, Texture, and Pattern
- Share the book The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin with students, possibly as part of a lesson on rhyming couplets.
- Ask students to identify examples in the book of different pumpkin colors and textures.
- Point out the "polka-dot" and "rainbow" pumpkins. Explain that when lines and shapes repeat regularly, they make a pattern.
- Compare and contrast the colors and textures found on the pumpkins in the book with the colors and textures of pumpkins found in nature, using real pumpkins or pumpkin photographs for comparison.
Activities for Identifying, Sorting, and Ordering by Color
Preparation: Cut out pumpkins in a variety of shapes and sizes from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paper.
- Have students name the different colors and sort the pumpkins by color.
- Have students sort the pumpkins into primary (red, yellow, blue) and secondary (orange, green, purple) colors.
- Have students sort pumpkins into warm (red, orange, yellow) and cool (green, blue, purple) colors.
- Have students put six pumpkins in rainbow order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple).
Art Activities Exploring Color
Provide students with coloring materials and pumpkin-shaped outlines or white paper pumpkin shapes.
- Have younger students color pumpkins a single color.
- Have older students color a pumpkin in a variety of colors to represent the coloring of a real, multicolored pumpkin.
- Have students color a pumpkin any way they want.
Activities for Exploring and Creating Textures
- Discuss how natural textures are sometimes irregular and sometimes made up of regular patterns. Have students make crayon rubbings of the textures of the sides of pumpkins and discuss whether these surfaces are regular or irregular. Note that the lines on the sides of a pumpkin might be regular, while the surface might be made up of irregular bumps.
- Provide students with pumpkin-shaped outlines or white paper pumpkin shapes. Have them finger paint, drag tools (such as toothbrushes or combs) through paint, or splatter paint with a toothbrush to create different textures.
Activities for Exploring and Creating Patterns
Provide students with coloring materials and pumpkin-shaped outlines or white paper pumpkin shapes.
- Have younger students use the picture in The Legend of Spookley as a model for drawing a polka-dot pattern and a rainbow pattern.
- Discuss and display examples of patterns such as wavy lines and cross-hatching. Invite students to copy these patterns or create their own patterns.
Integrated Art and Language Arts Extension Activities
- Have students match the colors found on real pumpkins with paint chips or crayons and build a vocabulary of color words to describe pumpkin colors.
- Have students describe and use clay to model different pumpkin textures.
Trade book illustrations can help students understand art concepts and provide them with models for the creation of their own art. Use this book also to teach about geometric solids and the laws of motion or try a leaf-themed art lesson about texture.
The copyright of the article Use Literature to Teach Color, Texture, Pattern in Primary School Lesson Plans is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish Use Literature to Teach Color, Texture, Pattern in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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