Colourful Mountain Contour Maps

First things first, I have no idea if the title of this post is correct. The project is a kind of topographic, 3D model contour map thing. If you know what it's called, please comment! I've seen the activity done on some other amazing sites like this and this. To fit in with our mountain topic, this project enabled children to work in pairs to create their own model. It was a bit challenging for some but in the end I was very pleased with the results. Generally, I found that the children who normally find art a bit trickier with drawing/colouring excelled and those who normally find art a bit of a doddle struggled with this (always nice when things get turned on their heads)

The class learnt about contour maps and how latitude could be shown. They looked at real-life examples from mountains that we've been studying and then produced a contour map sketch of their own mountain. This was then used to create their own model by following the steps below:

Equipment
- Coloured A4 card (LOTS OF IT). I looked into using foam-board but unfortunately the costing just wouldn't work if providing for 90 children across the year group. Cheaper coloured card and having children in pairs seemed the most appropriate choice
- Scissors
- Glue
- Rough paper for sketch

Steps
1. Sketch out your contour map. I told the children that we had enough card for each pair to guarantee 5 layers but as they are building, they can swap their left-over card with others to enable them to use different colours for added smaller layers on top.

2. Cut out your sketch.

3. Use your cut-out sketch as a stencil to cut out the same shape in coloured card.

4. Cut the first layer out around your sketch to leave you with your next layer.

5. Use this new stencil to cut out the shape from a different coloured piece of card.

6. Keep repeating this process until you have cut out all of your layers from card.

7. Cut strips of card and bend them into a 'Z' shape. Glue 3-4 of these between each layer to raise it up and make it 3D.

8. Assemble all of your pieces and you will end up with a 3D contour topographic model map thing :)

Here are some of the brilliant results:

I love all of the bright colours and creative designs. Some groups really went all out to create very interesting, complex shapes. Excellent job, Year 4, especially considering that these were completed in around an hour and a bit.

Next post will be a project that's been done by every art teacher blogger, but I just had to give it a go myself!

DB.