8th Grade 2-Point Perspective Dream Tree Houses

While I was subbing last spring, I was asked to teach two point perspective to the 8th graders. Instead of having them draw a standard house, I decided it would be fun to have them draw dream tree houses. This project is from Mini Matisse and she does it with 7th grade students, but the 8th graders enjoyed it. She also has a video that walks you step-by-step through the project (that was great for students who were absent and needed to catch up).

I had grand plans of also doing a shared project with my son's second grade classroom, but it didn't pan out due to time restrictions (but NEXT time I would have the littles brainstorm dream treehouse elements and have the 8th graders incorporate those into their work and then bring the treehouse images back to the second graders and have them write about the tree houses and create their own images).

This house has a car coming out of it!

I had the book, "Treehouses: The Art and Craft of Living Out on a Limb" by Peter Nelson on hand for some creative inspiration. WOW! Some of those tree houses are just fantastic!!

Vocab for the project: 2 point perspective, horizon line, vanishing points, parallel, horizontal, vertical, construction lines, recede, diverge, cube, depth

Anyway, the project was a great learning experience and I created two worksheets/handouts to go with the project. The first, a treehouse brainstorming sheet allowed the students to come up with ideas for their tree houses and tell me a story about their houses (those were fun to read!). I also came up with a an assessment checklist for the student and I to make sure that all of the expectations for the project were met.

Treehouse brainstorming sheet to be passed in with final drawing.

The checklist I used to assess the drawing.

Enjoy these creative dream tree houses! Sorry some of the pictures are wonky!

The bulletin board display. I added a title and the book by Nelson to the case as well.