Optical Illusions

I decided to try and do an optical illusion art lesson with my older students (4th and 5th grades).  I found a lot of optical illusion images and built a flipchart for my Promethean board.  The kids got really excited about looking at all of the illusions.  We even talked about how the word optical is similar to the words Optometrest, Opthamologist, and Op (from Op Art).  We talked about how the prefix has to do with the eye and seeing.

After looking at all of the illusions on the board, I passed out 9 x 12 newsprint, plastic bowls to trace circles, pencils and rulers.  First, the students created a practice drawing.  This was very important because the concept of using a ruler to draw straight lines was a bit foreign to them and the level of difficulty on this project was fairly high.  I thought teaching them ruler skills was beneficial too, because that is a skill that they may be tested on in math.  This lesson was also a wonderful way to introduce basic perspective and the vocabulary associated with it.

First the students traced a circle anywhere on their paper using a bowl, then they made marks on two sides (one long and one short) of their paper every inch.  Next, they used the ruler to create a checker pattern in their background by drawing a line everywhere their one inch marks were.  After that, they turned their circle into a spherical form by placing vertical curved lines that all dissapear at the same vanishing point on top and bottom.  Then they repeated this for the horizontal lines.  Lastly, they colored in their image with two crayon colors of their choice!

The results were magnificent!