Elementary Studio Lesson
A Thousand Lessons
I Want to Teach
Clay leaf cutter ants were glued to strips of refrigerator cardboard, which made for an easy display.
Craig Hinshaw
Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas in Peru, was recently voted one of the new Seven Won- These images are so large the pre-
nests where the leaves are composted
Columbian people who created them
to cultivate a fungus that the ants eat.
could never have seen them in their
In our classroom exploration during a
totality. The images can only be seen study of the rainforest, each student
ders of the World. Also in Peru are the from the air.
made a small, clay leaf cutter ant
mysterious Nazca Lines—a humming
I connected the Nazca Lines with
that included a head, thorax, abdo-
bird, a spider, and trapezoids—which
our fifth graders’ study of pollinators. men, six legs, and mandibles. After
are etched in the desert so large they
We used the four pollinators recently the ants were bisque fired and painted
can only be seen from an airplane.
depicted on U.S. postage stamps for
with tempera, students tore a “leaf”
I experienced some of these places our images:
from green
in recently when my wife (also a
humming-
construction For my students, I hope such art
throughout Peru. Aside from being
able to check off Machu Picchu on
I Die” list, we both brought back
students and schools. The following
and taught that dovetailed with our
assigned pollinators on paper and
paved driveway. Here students re-
ings had to be so large as to
not be easily recognizable
from the ground level.
Leaf Cutter Ants
Like a miniature flag-waving
parade moving through the
rainforest, streams of leaf cut-
ter ants carry clipped leaves to their
a rainforest
“fast fact”
and
assigned pollinators on paper and
paved driveway. Here students re-
ter ants carry clipped leaves to their and Fifth-grade face pots.
teacher) and I traveled for three weeks birds, bats,
paper, wrote experiences are an opening into
butterflies,
and bees.
new worlds, both ancient and
the “1000 Places I Want to See Before In groups of
on it, t contemporary—worlds that they
four, students
may someday visit themselves.
inspired, first-hand experiences to our sketched their
are four of the art lessons I developed then moved outside to the school’s then moved outside to the school’s
school’s curriculum. They were based drew their sketches using double drew their sketches using double
on the Peruvian Nazca Lines, leaf cut- outlines of yellow and white
ter ants, Moche pottery, and arpilleras. sidewalk chalk. Their draw-
The Nazca Lines
South of Lima, on the western side
of Peru, is one of the driest deserts
on earth. It is in this arid region that
an ancient culture created enigmatic
symbols and images by moving the
dark stones from the surface of the
