Art_The Grandparent Project

The grandparent project starts with a wonderful Native American story called Knots on a Counting Book by Bill Martin, Jr and John Archambault. It's a story about a blind boy who asks his grandfather to tell and retell the story of his birth. Each time he told the story, a knot was tied in the counting rope. By that time, the boy could tell the story on his own. There are other wonderful themes in the story but intergenerational relationships and storytelling are the inspiration for the second graders' own grandparent stories.

Next, the girls drew three sketches of their own memories with grandparents. They focused on showing with pictures the "who, what, where, when and why" of their stories. Then, they learned how to draw figures in different positions so that their characters can be in an action pose, sideways, turned backwards, or behind something. Second graders naturally begin to play with space in their drawings with overlapping, foreground, middle ground, size, and back ground, size and angles; this project allows them to make intentional choices to emphasize the relationship between her and her grandparent(s). Their final drawings will be done in chalk pastel.