Lesson Objectives

1. To learn about the concept of Architecture
2. To learn about towers and turrets
3. To learn watercolor painting techniques
4. To develop tracing, cutting, and gluing skills
5. To develop drawing skills, creating line and texture designs
6. To develop concept of near being larger, far being smaller

Grade Level

2nd Grade

Time Required

Three 40-Minute Periods

Procedure

Lesson 1

1. Establish that Architecture means all the buildings in the world. Show students different styles of architecture, for instance, Classical, the Parthenon vs. Modern, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. The buildings have many interesting parts. We will learn about and make a beautiful project of two parts called towers and turrets.
• The Taj Mahal: we guess the purpose of the building. It is a tomb for the Shah Jahan's favorite wife Mumtaz. We guess the place, India.
• St. Basils: we guess the purpose. It's a church. We guess the place, it is in Red Square, Russia. We also guess the materials used to build it. The turrets are carved from wood.
• Towers are the tall, pole-like, cylinder shaped parts of the buildings.
• Turrets are the Hershey's Kiss® shapes on the top of the cylinders.
2. Put names and sections on the back. We are painting the background for our magical cities of towers and turrets. With your large brushes, wet the whole paper with water.
3. Begin to dab large splotches of colors all over the wet paper.
4. You are only using RED, BLUE, and PURPLE paint colors today. Teacher demos the whole process. Stress using very bold, dark color. Paint one color at a time, wash the brush and change color. You can paint in rows or large dabs. Experiment.
5. Teacher has everyone hold their papers upright, each paper gets sprayed at the top with water. The student holds, turns etc. until they are satisfied with the MAGICAL results. Collect the papers and put on a drying rack.

Lesson 2

1. You will be building a magical city of towers and turrets. Arrange your FARTHEST buildings first, then put your closest buildings in front, overlapping the far ones. EXPERIMENT! Do you think all of your buildings need to be shaped like rectangles? No, BUT draw the shape in pencil first, then cut it out of the rectangle.
2. When they look good, glue them down. Do the back ones first. Use small dots of glue. If you see glue, you are using TOO much. Press everything down after you glue it.
3. You need to create turrets for every tower. There are large and small tracers for the turrets. They should be made out of the metallic paper. This paper is very expensive, so you may only take one square at a time to work on. It can look beautiful to wrinkle the metallic square and then smooth it out before you trace the turret on it. Glue the turrets on after they are cut out.

Lesson 3

1. Finish gluing towers and turrets.
2. Draw curves and put line designs and patterns on the towers in pencil.
3. Have a partner hold up your picture to evaluate.
4. Go over lines with markers.
5. You may add little metallic designs, stars (use dots), windows (can use the arch window tracers).

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