"Draw Me A Star"
-By: Eric Carle
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"Draw Me a Star" is a book about drawing with geometrical shapes. It follows an artist through his lifetime as he draws beautiful pictures that eventually create a beautiful landscape. The mathematical concepts in the story include geometry (shapes – identifying and drawing them) and counting (involved with actually drawing the star activity in the book). |
| Activities appropriate for Kindergarten or 1st grade. |
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Lesson Plan – this lesson combines mathematics and art. Eric Carle's book "Draw Me a Star" illustrates several objects that have geographical shapes in them. At the end of the book there is a great landscape with all of these geometrical drawings in them. |
Objective: The learner will learn about geometric shapes and draw pictures using these shapes.
Materials Needed: Eric Carle's book "Draw Me a Star", construction paper, markers or crayons (or whatever media you choose to color with), and scissors.
Procedure: For this activity, the entire class will read "Draw Me a Star" together and then begin with their geometrical landscape. Each students will be assigned an object from the book that must be constructed or drawn using as many geometrical shapes as possible. The objects found in the book include a good star, warm sun, lovely tree, woman and man, strong house, big dog, cat, bird, butterfly, flowers, cloud with heavy rain, and a rainbow. When all the geometric creations are complete, have each student discuss how they used shapes in their object. Then allow the students to recreate the landscape on a wall in the classroom or hall that is found in "Draw Me a Star".
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Other Activities with Shapes: |
* Sing the Hokey Pokey Song with Shapes
- This fun song can be sung with shapes instead of body parts. Have precut shapes on the floor in front of each child. Explain to the kids that when they hear a certain shape in the song they need to find the shape in their pile, hold it up, and do the actions to the song with that shape! "Put your circle (or rectangle or triangle, etc.) in, put your circle out, put your circle in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, that's what it's all about!" The kids will love it and they will really learn their shapes quickly by singing to music.
* Discover Shapes with Geoboards
- Show students shapes on the board or overhead and then have them recreate them with rubber bands on their geoboards. Students can learn a lot about shapes by creating and manipulating the shapes themselves.
* Go on a Shape Discovery Around the School
- Walk through the school and the outside school grounds and see how many shapes students can recognize. Also have students document and sketch in a journal the shapes they see outside of school!
* Create a Shape Guessing Bag
- Put three-dimensional objects into a bag and have students use their "feelers" to guess what the shape is.
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LINKS TO REAL STAR WEBSITES |
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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON CHILDREN'S LITERATURE WITH MATHEMATICS CLICK HERE |
| BUY ERIC CARLE'S "DRAW ME A STAR" HERE |