Hermione Granger! Wonder Woman! Winnie the Pooh! Usher! Steve McQueen! Roy Harper! Katniss Everdeen! Batman! Avatar! Captain Picard! Peta! Miranda Lambert! Indina Menzel! Taylor Swift! Winnie the Pooh! Gary Paulson! Johnny Cash! Jacob the Wolf! Blake Shelton! Claudia from the Babysitter's Club! 5th Grade suggested doing a unit involving DaVinci-type experiments! Let's do this!
Take a walk to a nearby park or favorite place in nature and look for signs of animal life—birds’ nests, anthills, cocoons, spiderwebs, animal tracks, and even dead bugs. Notice the different types of plants and trees and look closely at their bark, leaves, flowers, and seeds.
Observe the different colors, shapes, and textures all around you. When you find something that interests you, sit down with it a while and sketch it. Don’t worry if you can’t draw very well because this notebook is just for you. Try making a bark rubbing by placing a piece of paper over the bark of a tree and rubbing over the paper with a crayon or chalk to pick up the pattern of the bark. Collect a leaf and seed from that tree. Do the same for other trees. Do the bark patterns differ? How many different shapes of leaves can you find? Be as quiet as you can and listen attentively. Notice all the differ- ent sounds you hear. Do you hear birds, squirrels, planes, cars, running water, and your own breath? Use your tape recorder to record these sounds. Write down the time of day and all the sounds you hear in your notebook. Collect interesting things you find like rocks, shells, leaves, flowers, and dead bugs. Place them in your bag or box. You might want to press your flowers under some heavy books and then glue them in your notebook. Later you will be able to study these things and use them in a still-life painting, collage, or other work of art as Leonardo did. When Leonardo became a military engineer for Cesare Borgia he created many maps. Mapmakers are also called “cartographers.” Leonardo was one of the first cartographers to draw maps from a vista d’uccello, a bird’s-eye view. Leonardo liked to test his perceptions by guessing distances and heights. When he was walking he would pick an object in the distance and estimate the number of paces it would take to walk to it. He tried to guess the heights of buildings and trees. It was good practice for painting and mapmaking. |