Our Life-Sized Whale Outline
From our readings, we had learned that blue whales can grow to over 100 feet long! As amazing as these words seemed, we wanted to get a better idea of just how big 100 feet is. We decided to draw a life-sized whale on our playground - but how? Drawing such a large animal freehand seemed impossible, so we decided to draw it on a grid.
In addition to our study of whales, we had been investigating measurement, maps and shapes. We combined our skills in these areas by using a one inch grid to draw a ten inch blue whale on paper. We marked the corners of the shape with dots, which we labeled with letters. Our picture became a whale dot-to-dot! Every student connected at least two dots, and in this way we made our whale on paper.
Then it was time to enlarge our whale. Instead of one inch squares on a grid, we marked ten foot squares on the blacktop. After adding the dots and labels, we had a giant dot-to-dot. Armed with chalk, cameras and a video recorder, we began our immense art project. Each student connected some dots until the whale outline was complete. Then we all worked together to add the baleen to the whale's mouth. After that it was time to explore!
We tried standing in the whale's eye, just to see how many children would fit. Then we took class pictures on the whale's flipper. We all fit - with room to spare. Lastly, we hiked over to the whale's fluke, or tail. There was easily enough room to fit the other first grade classes in there with us! We estimated that we could fit all of the students and teachers of our school onto the whale's body. What a huge animal! When we were done, we really understood how big a blue whale is - it is enormous!
