The Northern Lights

I have been seeing tons of cute winter-related projects, and ran across this one centered on The Northern Lights. Kids are fascinated by bright colors, and they seem to still have a love for science at this point. I tried to do my own research on the Lights, but it's a hard phenomenon to explain. Basically what I gathered was that the poles attract energy, causing these brilliant colors in places like Alaska and Russia. 

I found the title below, and it reminds me of mythology, painting these stories behind why the Lights are there. There are dancing natives, swans flapping their wings, warriors shooting arrows, etc. I asked the kids if they could explain this, and they all seemed to have a better grasp on it than I did!

We started by making 4 diagonal lines with black paint for the trees. I showed them how to brush down and away to form the actual tree with their paint. We let them dry for a few minutes before adding the chalk pastel lights in the sky. Blending the chalk into the construction paper was very helpful so that the loose dust didn't smear everywhere later. 

We drew a simple polar bear using mostly circles and half circles. They outlined him in black marker before smudging some grey chalk around his neck and eyes to show some value. They cut him and pasted him into the Alaskan environment. Simple as that!