Our PE department at my school had a month long spotlight on health and nutrition with lots of fun activities the whole school got involved in. The art department of course also chipped in! Each class from grade one to grade seven have been busy working on a variety of art lessons to support the theme. I will share these lessons over the next couple of weeks in case you have something similar going at your schools.

For the grade five’s we looked at famous Impressionist Edgar Degas. Degas was a master of capturing movement in his paintings. Do all those gorgeous ballerinas come to mind?

We looked at some of his paintings and discussed them for a while before brainstorming movements that each student could do that was ‘healthy‘ for the body–see the connection to the PE theme? 🙂 Karate, tennis, soccer, etc were the ideas and everyone was sent off to their seats with a 12×18 piece of paper, pencil and eraser.

Each student drew themselves doing a movement with an appropriate background. These were colored in with chalk pastels and blended to give that nice soft, Degas feel to them.

Part 2 of this lesson was to make themselves doing the same movement but as a sculpture- once again connecting back to Degas’ famous ballerina sculptures.

Aren’t these great? I love my students!!

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