Elementary Art Assignment 3: Imagining Travel Without Limitations
Seeing that younger Elementary aged children are highly inquisitive, enjoy asking questions, enjoy learning about new things and how they work, this Art lesson was designed to introduce various forms of transportation and travel.
We spoke about airplanes, helicopters, steam-trains, high-speed underground trains, submarines, yachts, fighter-jets, trucks, family cars, race-cars and so forth, while investigating the following questions:
a.)-Who drives /or travels in each of these forms of transportation?
b.)-What is the purpose of large trucks? Which types of goods do they transport?
c.)-What are submarines used for? (Scientific research, military operations etc.)
d.)-Which is faster: an airplane /or a helicopter?
e.)-Why are family cars different to race cars? (And many other similar questions).
Although the teacher leads the lesson by asking some questions, the aim of the lesson was to encourage the Art students to think of as many questions as they were able to, related to the pictures which were shown to them about various forms of transportation.
Once they have learned the new vocabulary related to transportation, as well as what various types of transportation are used for, (and ‘who’ travels more typically in certain forms of transportation), it was time to engage the students in a fun and imaginative art exercise. According to Erikson’s Theory Of Psychosocial Learning, Lewis (2020) explains that young Elementary aged students love to be engaged in fantasies, stories and imaginary play.
Therefore, the following practical exercise within this art lesson required the young students to act upon the title of the lesson, which was: ‘Imagining Travel Without Limitations’.
As seen below, (now understanding what ‘transportation’ is), the students had to draw their own, ‘imaginary vehicles’ with their own ‘unique functions and purposes’.
For example, some flying-aircrafts depicted by the Elementary students were meant to protect their families from natural disasters, while other imaginary vehicles had many secret compartments, or the capability to time-travel and to visit other planets.