Science in Art

For this groups lesson they instructed us on how to make trees in different seasons, either winter or fall. To start off the lesson used any color of construction paper we wanted for our background, We then traced our forearm and hand on brown paper for the trunk of our tree. Once we had cut it out we crumbled it up so that there was texture in it that resembled bark on a tree. We decorated the tops of the trees with tissue paper or cotton balls. The cotton balls resembled snow and the tissue paper could be green, yellow, red, and orange for fall leaves or white for snow. I chose to use cotton balls and tissue paper so that I had two different kinds of snow. Once we were done decorating the tree and branches we were instructed to decorate the landscape according to our season. Since mine was winter I had pieces of cotton balls falling all around to look like snow and some cotton balls up top for clouds. I colored snow on the ground with white crayon and sprinkled glitter all around so that my snow sparkled. After we were done with our season tree, we had to write two characteristics we used in our season. I think this is a great lesson for students to learn about seasons and all the little details that go into each one.

For an extension activity, I would have the students do one tree as a class for each season. The tree would have the exact same shape in each of the four seasons, but then the students would decorate it and the landscape according to the season. At the end of the year, the students could see how it had changed throughout the seasons. I would then have them write a paragraph/paper about what changed in the seasons and all the characteristics they saw throughout them.