Rockets, Space and The Solar System

After painting to the music of Holst: The Planets last week in seemed timely to do a lesson on Space.  I borrowed some space and solar system books from the library and placed them all over the table for inspiration.  We discussed what the children knew about space, planets and rockets (yes Star Wars references did come up...).  We completed two pieces of artwork (my little artists work very fast!!) in this lesson.

1. ROCKETS IN SPACE
I got this idea from Lil Picasso's only I used oil pastels instead of the watercolour pencils as I wanted the rockets to be really bright and stand out.

You will need:

• Black Paper A3
• White Paper A4
• Oil Pastels
• White Paint
• Red, Orange & Yellow Paint
• Red & Gold Glitter

How To:

• Get the children to splatter the white paint onto the black paper. put aside to dry
• Ask the children to draw a rocket on the white paper with the oil pastels and colour in
• Cut out rocket
• Glue rocket onto paper and then paint in the fire from the jets
• Sprinkle with glitter

The Results:

2. THE SOLAR SYSTEM

I got this idea from Art with Ms Gram .  She did it with 5th graders though.  Since I have a few Prep students I made it easier for them by providing a template with circles already drawn on it so they could concentrate on colouring, cutting and pasting. 

What you need:

• same as above

How to:

• Splatter Black paper with white paint
• Colour planets with oil pastels (I used this lesson to show them a little about shading so we discussed what part of the planet would be in the sun and what would be in shade and they added some shading to their colouring in)
• Cut out planets
• Paint in sun on paper with red, yellow and orange paint (some used glitter for the sun too)
• Glue on Planets
• Add in rings and other space elements with oil pastel

The Results:

Our artist of the week was Chesley Bonestell.  He was a pioneer of astronomical and space art.
Below is his painting of a view of Saturn from its moon Titan, a work of art that has been so inspiring to artists, sci fi writers, astronomers, rocket scientists and anyone else connected to the world of space travel that it's been dubbed, "the painting that launched a thousand careers."



Cheers Fiona