I didn’t anticipate that my displayed teacher example for this project would stir the pot of justice with my students, but surprise. No fewer than four perturbed 4th graders in different classes asked me why we didn’t do this project last year when they were in 3rd grade. I explained to them that I just found out about this project this year, but fourth grade art could also do it if they wanted to. That seemed to solve the injustice of missing out on making a chalk pastel solar eclipse. 😂

This project is as engaging as it is messy – extremely. We built in time to wash hands and tables, but whew. Get ready. It was a rare day when one or more students didn’t head home with a fine coating of colorful chalk dust.

I’m always looking for a project that’s quicker than what we usually work on, and this delivers. We had a brief class discussion about what an eclipse is. Since we had one in the last month, it was fresh in everyone’s minds.

We traced bowls on card stock and cut the circles out. (I had to trim a few rough edges off the circles but it didn’t take long.) Then I showed the class how to roll cellophane tape on itself to create a small sticky cylinder. We made two tape cylinders and stuck our card stock circles on our black paper.

Then came the best part, pushing chalk pastel around on our papers. I demoed how to get a strong layer on and how to blend two colors together, then I let them proceed however they wanted. They really enjoyed their creative time with the chalk pastel.

Getting the right amount of white chalk pastel around the taped down cardstock circles was trial and error at first. A single thin ring of white chalk pastel barely makes a peep but too much looks too heavy, so we aimed for the Goldilocks happy medium.

We removed our taped on cardstock circles in the big reveal for what we thought would be our last step. About half the students needed to clean their black circles with an eraser after that.

I showed the students how to put their finished art in a protective clear sheet cover (you’re welcome parents!) and they took them home after 2 class periods total. Woohoo!