Charley Harper Math Adventure: Integrating Art, Geometry and Science

Sometimes a book sparks an idea. Mrs. Maitlen saw this book and thought, "We could do that!" And so we did.

We looked online at the artwork of Charley Harper and discovered that his "minimal realism" style is almost opposite of John James Audubon's very detailed realistic style that we had studied earlier. 

Mr. Harper once said, "When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don't see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures."

First of all, we decorated the classroom windows with Charley Harper decals. 

"exciting shapes"

"color combinations"

We then played around with different shapes and made our own "interesting pictures."

"patterns"

"textures"

Time to make our own works of art using geometric shapes. "Endless possibilities"

 

 

  

Art is so inspiring.

Geometry is all around us.

The study of animals in science is so interesting. 

Put them all together and voila - exponential learning!