Positive / Negative Faces

3rd Grade

Monta Loma Elementary School

Mountain View, California

This was a challenging Shape project for these 3rd graders! It was hard for them to imagine what their face would like, until they glued down the negative space of the around the, and the positive shape of the face shape.




First I gave a brief introduction to shape, and how all shapes are enclosed lines, which all have a negative space. Negative space is any space in and around a shape. I described it as "subtracting space from a shape".

We then talked about what "symmetry" means, many students knew the definition. We found the "line of symmetry" on the black pice of paper by folding it in 1/2, to use as a reference for gluing.

Then students drew a 1/2 face on a 6x9 white piece of paper. They cut out the silhouette of the face, then glued the negative space onto the right side of the black paper.

Then students continued to cut out eyes, noses, and any other small shapes they drew within their face. Those were set aside. Then their faces, with cut-out eyes, noses, etc., was glued onto the left side. (At this point, many students put the pieces together and did an "Ah HA! I understand now!" kind of gesture, and understood the next steps to complete their mirror image.