I'm so excited to show you what I've been working on with the students at Oakridge Elementary!! I've been meeting with a group of about 20 K-3 students, twice a week after school. It's considered their "Art Club". It's really nice... they have a grant to help them bring in Lane Arts Council Teaching Artists (me) all the time, so they're constantly rotating and learning different techniques and materials. Pretty neat for such a rural school that might not get that kind of stuff otherwise. Anyway, onto the project!
Collaborative paper murals do a lot of good for kids. It's great to get kids working on their own pieces, and then "give them up" to be a part of a much bigger work of art. So they get to be creative and work independently, and then they get to work as a team to put it all together as a whole. Here's what we did:
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Day 1: We made vegetables and flowers using oil pastel and watercolors over them (same thing as a crayon resist technique).
Day 2: We split into teams and some tables made dirt, some made clouds, some made flower stems and grass, some made a sun. We took turns gluing things onto the blue butcher paper (I didn't do any of that, they got to make all the choices together, by communicating with each other - key!)
Day 3: We did step-by-step drawing together to make a bumblebee, hummingbird, and butterfly. Each student made one of each, then we glued these on, too.
This project is PERFECT for springtime lessons about pollination!!! Half of our mural was a veggie garden, half a flower garden. We talked about the importance of the pollinators to both sides. This is really really worth the time and effort. Kids love it, it teaches science concepts, teamwork and communication, and also independent work and creativity. Have fun!!
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| before we added pollinators.... |
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| gluing pieces on... |
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| Each student made one of each kind of pollinator! |
End Results:
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