Objective: *Students learn basic functions of a digital camera. *Students use images to tell a story. *Students upload media. *Students create visual art describing weather.
Activity:
Have the students view the BrainPop Video about Photograpy. Click on the "Say Cheese" stickie note located on the Glogster of Arts Resources. Discuss ways that photographs tell the viewer a story.
Have the students take digital pictures that can tell a story about the weather conditions from their view. Let them be photographer for at least a week. Discuss ideas about what outdoor scenes can tell a story about that days weather. Examples: The ground after rain, broken branches from wind, snow or mud footprints, a garden full of flowers, leaves on trees or on the ground, etc
Have each student save their photos to the class flickr account "Weather Around the World" either from their homes or in the classroom. Students can easily access their photos from any computer and save a copy to the hard drive file. Have some available to help them with saving a file.
Students click the Play Zone frame below the "Say Cheese" Stickie. This link leads the children to Crayola's "Lights, Camera's, Color". Click on try me at the bottom of the introduction. The children with assistance click "pick a photo" to find the saved photo file to upload. Drain the color will be the next step. The students will be amazed that their photo turned into a coloring book page.
The students print out their coloring page creation. Allow them time to color it and display it for a gallery viewing in your classroom. Let each child tell the story of what their photograph/coloring means to them about weather. Encourage questioning from teachers and peers about what they see in their artwork. Help spark their wonderful imaginations and enhance expressive language skills.
For an extra fun boost of creativity: students can create a melody on the Be a Composer cassette. Have them listen to the "Patterns in Music" icon to hear examples of music pitch communicating the world around us. A stormy day may have loud booming music while a lazy summer day may have soft slow music. They will then be able to make a song relating to their photo/coloring attributes.
