Artful Assessment

Grade 4 Science and Visual Arts Lessons

Dahlov Ipcar’s Blue Savanna is like a microcosm of the African savanna ecosystem with its diverse and interdependent plants and animals that live in a particular habitat. A wide variety of stylized animals, plants, insects, and birds exist together harmoniously within her quasi-cubist format. This flattened, geometric arrangement of space emphasizes the imaginative and decorative aspects of the animals’ details, colors, and patterns. Ipcar is not depicting a realistic view of an African savanna, but she does show the rich web of plants and animals that live in that biome, while expressing her love for these animals. In these lessons, students will choose specific biomes and animals to research; in the science classroom students will do research and create posters and collages of their biomes and animals, and in the art classroom they will draw and paint their animals in the stylized manner of Dahlov Ipcar.