Hokusai's Great Wave pops up! 2nd grade

The Great Wave off Kanagawa is one of my favorite artworks and beloved around the world. Katsushika Hokusai carved this image into wood and printed the design on paper hundreds of years ago. Far in the distance in Mount Fuji, its snowy top resembling the white capped waves in the foreground, which are tossing boaters about. This video, complete with dramatic music from Debussy, gives the viewer a 3-D experience and inspired us to make our own 3-D waves, in pop-up.



The Great Wave off Kanagawa from Peter Van Valkenburgh on Vimeo.

Making the pop-up is simple- fold a background paper in half from top to bottom and cut a couple of tabs into the folded side, then push these out the opposite way. The background is drawn on the top half - clouds, weather, Mount Fuji. On another sheet of thick paper, draw your big wave and cut it out, then glue to the front of one tab. Using the scraps from the big wave, make a smaller wave and glue to the second tab. On a third paper, which can be a small scrap, make a few boats and have them placed between the waves.

You can see narrated videos of the kids opening their pop-ups on Instagram - search @smartestartists - the videos are super cute and you can see more of the structure. Not sure how to get those videos on blogger ...