Egyptian Landscapes

First graders read the story Bill and Pete Go Down The Nile, by Tomie dePaola to introduce their Ancient Egypt unit.

Students learned many new art words with this project. They learned that a landscape artwork is artwork that shows something outside. They learned that a landscape artwork usually has a horizon line that divides the artwork into sky and ground. Students learned that when an artist want to show that something is far away they make it smaller and place it closer to the horizon line. When artists want to show something that is close up they make it larger and further away from the horizon line. Students also learned that the warm colors are red, yellow, orange, and pink; and that the cool colors are blue, purple, green, and turquoise. They also learned that a tint is a color that has white added to it.

First students painted the sky for their landscape, paying attention to only painting above the horizon line. Next they painted a sheet of paper using brown and a tint of brown. Once dried they ripped this into pieces and glued it below the horizon line on their sky painting. Lastly they made pyramids and camels from construction paper. The larger pyramid was glued towards the bottom of the paper, and the smaller pyramid was glued closer to the horizon line.

***Lesson idea from Cassiestephens.blogspot.com***