Art and Ecosystems
The way I could incorporate a work of art in my science
class room is by having kids discuss the painting or even have them draw their
own work. I really liked Maratha Odum and her paintings. I loved how she
captured such a beautiful scenery of nature and how peaceful her paintings were.
While admiring them, I thought of a great idea of how to incorporate many of
her paintings in my classroom. I thought that I could have the students do a "gallery walk" with several
of her paintings (ones I have posted below) and then students could describe the different
ecosystems that are in each of the paintings and some characteristics of each one. I would then have student create their own
paintings/drawings of one of the ecosystems that are represented in the
paintings. I think this would be a great activity because it allows kids to
look at another example of ecosystems other than just in a textbook. This also
allows students the chance to see another way of how science plays such a huge
part in other areas of life and not just in the classroom, but also in art. I
think the idea of getting students to create their own painting of an ecosystem
not only allows them to learn about them in a different way, but also lets
students explore their creative side in a content area class.
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Hi Hannah! When I saw these paintings as we walked through the gallery I thought of the exact same idea. I think this is such a cool way to connect science and the world around us. I specifically remember learning a unit on the different ecosystems in 8th grade science and the way my class learned them was so boring. We just were given words to describe the different ecosystems and then made a flip chart. I love this idea as possibly an intro to different types of ecosystems and having students think about what makes each one different as seen in the paintings.
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Even though science is not my content area, I found it very interesting that you considered having the students address the ecosystems in each painting. This is a creative way to teach students without using generic picture in a textbook. I agree that having them do this activity would force students to realize that science is used in other areas besides the classroom. Odum could not have effectively created these wonderful paintings if she was not educated on ecosystems, and the dynamics of them. This also reminded me of putting out paintings that may have required artists to use math formulas for. For example, if a painting has a building, the painter probably had to calculate area and depth to figure out how to effectively make the building look 3D. Thank you so much for sharing, and I am happy this gave me an idea of how to relate it to math!
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