shape robots - 2nd grade
to continue the concept of building upon the elements of art slowly, i was inspired by these shape robots. in a cartooning class i was teaching, i wanted my students to create a robot to help solve a problem.  "why would it be built out of the things you chose? how can this help solve problems for you and your family?"  naturally, they began brainstorming with electronics: mostly using ipods and ipads to help build their robots body and i noticed how many geometric shapes they were using to create them.  i decided to carry this over into the school year to help teach rigid, everyday geometric shapes so that later it could help me introduce a contrast matisse collage using geometric/organic shapes, but that is another lesson entirely!!

anyway, the students were challenged to identify as many geometric shapes they could list.  they also needed to start thinking about "real-world" shapes that they could imagine building a robot out of.  

they loved doing this project and i loved seeing the results.  so many different results with this one project.  each one had it's own little personality.  i would probably use 9x12 paper next year seeing as these were HUGE and it would help reduce time as well as help saving paper, but otherwise, it was a successful lesson and helped me continue on to lessons about organic shapes :)

here is a worksheet i used to help my students brainstorm in a visual way without feeling threatened that everything had to be "perfect" - they are so hard on themselves!!!

loved tracing everything in black crayon first so we don't lose any of those fine details my 2nd graders added!

i had templates of large rectangles and squares for my students to start off tracing.  they added smaller details themselves.