Because they're so downright messy, I don't have students use soft pastels for very many lessons. However, there's no denying how right they are for certain subjects. Case in point: the Northern Lights. I've seen several examples of lessons like this on Pinterest and finally decided to let my 5th graders give one a go. As usual, they didn't disappoint! We started by drawing simple overlapping hills along the bottom of our black 12x18 construction paper, leaving thick lines between the…
