Thursday, December 3, 2009

Optical Illusions, 5th Grade


Today we created Optical Illusions with one of my fifth grade classes. Some students loved this project, but others found it very hard. Unlike most of my art projects, this one involved using our mathematical brains. These look really cool when all of them are hung together on the wall.


To create these, we started with a square piece of paper. First we drew a grid using rulers. Then we traced three circles onto the grid. Now for the hard part, color in every other space black. This seems easy, but it really takes thought. When you get to the circles, you may not be coloring the entire square, but a small piece of the square. No two black spaces should touch each other. There are some mistakes in these, but they still turned out awesome.
I did not come up with this lesson myself. I found it on one of my favorite websites, Oodles of Art.



2 comments:

  1. can you tell us how you did it

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  2. The directions are posted on the OOdles of Art blog, but here is what I had the students do:

    1. Draw a grid with rulers (1 inch squares)
    2. Color in every other square
    3. When they get to the circles, the students will not be coloring the entire square, but just a piece of it. (This is the hard part and it takes a lot of thinking)
    4. No two colored pieces should be next to each other
    5. It was helpful for my students to mark the ones to be colored in pencil first. That way many of them caught their mistakes before adding the marker.

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