Architectural Printmaking with Chromebooks

What happens when you ask fourth grade students to pick their favorite piece of architecture and research using their new Chromebooks? You end up with an exploration of unusual buildings from around the world!  Students were introduced to unique architectural structures through this video.

  They were given a list of famous buildings in a google document I shared with them and allowed to explore the buildings during art.  At the end of class, they chose their favorite building and sent themselves an image of the building to their email.  Believe me, there were many new technology related steps learned that day!

The next step in this lesson was to draw the building as well as other buildings found in that city.  They needed to know what city their building was from and find a skyline image of the city in order to surround their building with other buildings.  

The skyline did not need to be realistic to the geographic layout of the real city, but it was important to retain cultural integrity to their drawing.  Surrounding the Sydney Opera House with the London skyline just doesn't make sense.
After students completed their final drawings, they traced their picture onto tracing paper, flipped it over and traced it onto styrofoam, and cut out the "sky" or negative space above their buildings.  

3 sunset paintings were measured with a ruler to fit their styrofoam.  We made 3 paintings because printmaking is a fickle process.  The odds of all 3 prints coming out well was dicey!
When the students were ready to print, they make a couple practice prints and examined their styrofoam for any improvements and "carvings" that needed to be done before applying it to their final sunset papers.  When the 3 prints were completed, students named their prints with the title of their buildings and cities, numbered and signed their prints.  This was a multi-week process that incorporated old world art techniques (drawing and printmaking) with 21st century research.  As you can see, the results are fantastic and students were awed by their final products.