da Vinci's Robot

2nd grade took some time to learn about Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. We took a look at some of his paintings and discussed the Renaissance, but the project really focused on da Vinci more as an inventor. Thousands of pages of his sketches and notes have been found. The man was brilliant! He came up with ideas for planes, helicopters, tanks, guns, and robots hundreds of years before they were ever actually made! We took this as an opportunity to make our own robots!

Someone created a "mechanical knight" (or robot) based on da Vinci's sketches.

I got this project from my friend, Tiffany Beltz, at a lesson exchange and have been antsy to use it with my kiddos! I got the idea to tie robots in with da Vinci from some other blogger that I saw on pinterest somewhere.

The first day was spent drawing our robots. Students were given a sheet that had all kinds of robot body parts that they could choose from to draw.

The second day, we talked about form again. We talked about it previously with Frank Gehry. However, when we studied Gehry, we were making an artwork that was actually 3D. With da Vinci, we were working with the illusion for form or 3D.  Students carefully painted their entire robot grey. Then they painted a light blue highlight on one side of their robot. On the other side, they painted black for a shadow. This gave the look that our robots had sides and form.

The 3rd day, we re-drew our entire robot so we knew where all of our details were. Then they cut it out and glued it onto a grey sheet of paper.

The final day, they used a black oil pastel to trace all of their pencil lines. When they were all finished, they were given a worksheet and they had to come up with their own invention. I encouraged them to think of areas in their lives that were difficult and that they wished were easier. Some of the inventions were so creative!