Spacewalk Drawings
For this lesson, I showed my first graders the art of Alexei Leonov, the first man to spacewalk. Leonov was inspired by his time in space and spent a lifetime creating art based off the experience.
When Alexei Leonov left our atmosphere in 1965, he brought a little pack of colored pencils with him. He rushed back inside the ship after his first spacewalk and hurried to capture what he saw in a drawing. This initial sketch became the basis on which many of his future paintings were built upon.
After learning about Leonov, the students describe this next painting. We talk about how big the astronaut is and so students need to draw big as well!
Alexei Leonov couldn’t leave Earth without his colored pencils, and so I encourage the students to think hard about what they would want to bring with them on a log trip as well. Finally, students draw themselves doing a spacewalk along with something special they would bring with them: these range anywhere from toys to books to sisters to puppies! The conversations these kids have are always so fun and interesting!
A student and her dog.
A student and her favorite book.
A student and his Dr. Pepper!
