It's Conference Time in NH! FALL 2017 NHAEA Newsletter & Conference Info

Hello again! It's Fall Conference time here in NH!

I have been going to the New Hampshire Art Educators' Association (NHAEA) Fall Conference since 2011 and really love it. It's a great opportunity to connect with other educators in the state and they always offer so many wonderful sessions.

I am the newsletter editor for the NHAEA and here's the Fall Newsletter which has the conference information. This year's conference theme is "Champions of Constructive Change." I know some of my followers live too far away to attend, but if you live near Southern NH (the conference is in Manchester, NH), think about attending! Also, check out the newsletter and see what we are up to in NH!

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Paul Cezanne! (On January 19th)

In honor of Cezanne's birthday, I thought I would REPOST a popular lesson from 2013 that is fun and easy and is appropriate for a wide range of students. The painting below is my youngest son's and was featured in the book "500 Kids Art Ideas" by Gavin Andrews published by Quarry Books. While this is a nice fall-inspired still life, you could change it to pears or lemons/limes for a more winter or spring theme. Either way, the results are fabulous and the lesson is chock-full of active learning.

-------------------------------

We are all into fall over here and I thought this week would be a nice time to do a still life with apples with my after school art class. This is the first time we've met this school year, and the group has 1st-4th graders in it. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, it's actually a combination of two lessons I saw out there:

My 1st grader's example with Cezanne's reproduction.
I can't show you the still life--he ate it!
(UPDATE: He's now in 3rd grade, but still eats still eats everything in sight!)

"Still Life With Oil Pastels and Baby Oil" (2 posts) from Fine Lines
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/still-life-with-oil-pastels-and-baby.html
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/oil-pastels-and-baby-oil-part-2.html

That was pretty much the lesson I used, but I modified my talk in the beginning to be about Paul Cezanne's work showing them "Still Life With Apples."

I then used the talk I found on That Artist Women: "Open vs. Closed Composition"
http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/09/open-vs-closed-composition.html

I really like how she shows real art examples in her post. I showed those to my kiddos as well.

Then I gave them time to experiment with arranging the apples (and one girl's donated pear) into closed and open compositions. There were three students to a table and the table needed to agree on a composition they liked best.

And then we were off! I walked them through drawing, demoed how to use the oil pastels and baby oil, and gave a quick watercolor demo.

These are their creations! Beautiful! They are so proud (me too!).

Enjoy!

Love printmaking? Try these lessons!

I've rediscovered printmaking over the last month or so. I love printmaking because it is easy and can be done on the cheap. Well, sort of. The process is always so fun for the students and the results are magical--I love to watch them "ooh" and "aah" over their prints!

Well, here's a round-up of some past printmaking lessons from my site that may have you rocking and rolling with your students!

Matching Mittens with Found Object "Snow" Prints

USING FOAM TRAYS:
Reduction Prints (Using Styrofoam trays and found objects)
Andy Warhol Self Portraits (Using Styrofoam trays and a pencil to "carve" an image)
Reduction Print Selfie (Using Styrofoam tray and gradually removing portions of it between inkings)

USING CRAFT FOAM:
Haunted Houses (Using sticky-backed foam shapes)
Fall Banner (Using foam shapes to make stamps--can be changed for any theme or season)

FOUND OBJECTS AS STAMPS:
Create Your Own Stamps (Using found objects and wine corks to make your own stamps)
Matching Mittens and Snowflakes (Cut paper mittens with found object "snow")
Focal Point Fruit Prints (Using an apple or pear to print--exploring focal point too).
Leaf Prints (This is mine, it's from Deep Space Sparkle, but it is my go-to early finisher activity in the fall).
Modern Day Adinkra Cloth (Using stamped symbols on sections of card stock that are joined together into one "cloth")
Spring Forsythia Still Life (Using pieces of sponge to make a lovely arrangement of forsythia blossoms)
Not-So-Scary Dancing Skeletons (Uses doggy bone treats for unique stamps)

USING YOUR HANDS:
Andy Warhol Hand Prints (Seriously one of my most popular posts, but not mine--from Artolazzi--so easy!).

And one of my all-time popular posts--
Quick Andy Warhol Hand Prints

Fall Still-life With Glue and Pastels

Here are some pretty still-life creations my after school art class finished up this week. OK, I can use other, more "artsy" words like "dynamic" or "engaging" to describe these, but MAN, are they pretty, too! I've done this project before, and the students are always amazed at how the pieces come out (me too!). This group had students who are in first grade through fourth--so you can see it's pretty accessible to all with the right amount of scaffolding.

I made the mistake, this time, of using clear glue (gel and plain clear) since that's what other art teachers have said they used for this project with great success. I tried it because, in the past, I had found the regular  Elmer's glue can dry a bit cloudy. Anyway, I WAS NOT happy with the results. The clear glue soaked into the paper and ran off as the students were moving them to the drying space leaving drips and blops all offer the classroom and my car (a.k.a. the mobile art studio). It also soaked through the paper and glued the pieces to tables and the seats of my car...(big unhappy face for Mrs. Pettus) ;-)

So, if you do this project--which a HIGHLY suggest you try--use plain old Elmer's. It's fine for this project. So fun and magical (and "pretty")! Check out my previous post about this technique here.

ENJOY!

Printmaking with Shapes: Spooky Haunted Houses

Cue the scary music! It's time to get spooky! In my after school class we talked about silhouettes and nighttime and fall. Although we don't usually walk around outside at night--we may be doing that soon if we Trick-or-Treat at Halloween. Halloween can be lots of things: scary, exciting, spooky, cold, dark, and tingly (I love that one!). I had the idea to create a spooky neighborhood and I asked the students to help me by creating their own Spooky Houses.

We had tried another way of making printmaking plates the week before, but the students were struggling a bit and I knew the final results might be "eh" instead of "WOW!" The class is made up of first- through fourth-graders and since they were all struggling with the media, I realized I chosen the wrong way to go about this project! So I rethought the project over the week and this is what I came up with...

We used sticky back foam shapes to create the "silhouette" or outline of our houses that we could then print onto different colors of paper. That's the cool thing about printmaking--you make one plate and you can re-ink it and print it multiple times! Below are the directions for the project. We did it during one after school class period, but I would do this over three regular art classes (to also include a basic writing component--more on that later). Anyway, this will get you started:

On the left: Printing plate example
Middle: The print
Right: The haunted house print embellished with details.

Spooky Printmaking Nighttime Houses

Supplies Needed For the Printing Plates:

• Sticky-back Foam Shapes (I bought larger sheets and cut my own shapes from them--squares, triangles, long, skinny strips, rectangles, etc.). 
• Mat board or foam core cut into rectangles for the printing plate (ours are 5 1/2" x 7" because that's what I had).
• Scissors
• Pencils

Directions to make the Printing Plates:

1. Arrange the foam shapes onto the plate to create the silhouette or outside shape of a spooky house. I had the students arrange the pieces first, then when they liked what they had created, they could peel the paper off the back of their shapes and attach them to their plates.
2. Add elements to the background: bats, ghosts, etc. Attach those to the plate as well. Younger kids may need help cutting out complex shapes such as bats.

Supplies Needed For the Prints:

• Your completed printing plate (from above)
• Newspaper for covering surfaces
• Solid colored papers (We used orange, 2 shades of purple, and lime green cut to 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" rectangles)
• Washable printmaking ink in black
• A soft rubber roller
• A piece of plastic-coated butcher paper (maybe 14"x 17" or so)
• Masking tape or painter's tape

Directions to make Prints:

1. Before you begin, set up your work area by taping the butcher paper (plastic-side up) to the work surface on all four sides with tape. This will be the area you'll use for the ink and roller. Squirt a bit of ink on this area and use the roller to spread it around and load the roller. Also, place newspapers on the rest of your work surface.
2. Ink up the plate, and place a sheet of paper on top of it, rub and press gently & remove. Ta da! A print. Move it to a drying area (that has been covered with newspaper) and let dry.
3. Repeat to create more prints. I had the students make three to take home and one for me.
4. Let the prints dry before moving on to the next step.

Supplies to Embellish and Complete the Spooky Houses:

• Glue sticks and Elmer's glue
• Large sheets of black construction paper (12 x 18"), 1 per student
• Scraps of yellow, orange and red paper for windows and moons
• Scissors and pencils
• Sharpies (thin and thick)
• Googly eyes (optional)
• Halloween stickers (optional)

Directions to Embellish and Complete the Spooky Houses:

1. Have students glue three of their prints to the black construction paper sheet using a glue stick.
2. Have students draw and cut out windows and moons, etc. from the yellow scraps of paper. They can trace their pencil lines with Sharpie, if they like. My students also used Sharpies to add cracks to their windows, spiders, and scary phrases to the doors like "Keep Out!" and such.
3. Glue the windows, doors, and moons, to the prints using glue sticks.
4. Add goggly eyes to any critters on their prints, if desired: ghosts, cats, bats. Use Elmer's glue for that.
5. Embellish with stickers, if desired.

Close up of my trial print.

And now you are ready for a Spooky Fall Night! ENJOY!

Leaf Man Nature Collages

The beautiful fall colors are fading away up here in New Hampshire (since we've had days of rain and wind), but I wanted to share one of my favorite art projects to do with kids of all ages: "Leaf People (or Leaf Critters)" made with elements from a nature walk and inspired by Lois Ehlert's book, "Leaf Man."

My teacher followers might say, "YAWN. Seen it before." And you are right, but kiddos from Pre-K to 4th like doing this project and every time they do it, their pieces get more and more sophisticated. Also, their observations of the natural elements develop the older they get. What a great link to literature and science!

Here's the "Leaf Man"Book.
Another book by Ehlert that is also perfect
for this time of year is "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" as well...

My after-school kiddos were stuck inside due to rain, so I was responsible for gathering materials for this project. Ideally, I like to take students outside to gather/discuss leaves and seeds. Either way, it pays to have some teacher-supplied elements so that everyone isn't using the same shape leaf in their pieces. I collected about 15 different types of leaves, some twigs, acorns, and maple tree "helicopter" seeds, but I bet you could find even more than that given a little time. Collect the leaves right before you plan to use them since you want them to be pliable and not crispy.

Here's the abbreviated timeline for the project:

1. Read the book "Leaf Man." How did the Illustrator, Ms. Ehlert, use natural materials such as leaves to make animals, insects, and people?
2. Talk about background. Notice the backgrounds in the book--how are they made? Are they all the same?
3. Show the students how to tear a piece of scrapbook paper in half in an interesting way. Now we have two pieces of paper. They can be layered this way (demonstrate) to create different types of backgrounds: a lake with mountains in the back, etc. Trade one of your pieces with someone in the classroom and practice making different backgrounds until you get one that you like.
4. Glue down the background pieces onto a third piece of scrapbook paper using a glue stick.
5. Create a leaf person, a leaf critter or both on your background. Don't glue the nature pieces down right away--try out different leaves and seeds. When you are happy, then glue it down using goopy glue (Elmer's glue). I had eyeball stickers on hand for them to add as well--the kids like that! But you could use googly eyes, draw the eyes using a Sharpie, or only use natural elements like Ehlert does.
6. Let dry and enjoy!!

Here are some examples from class:

Did you know: The leaves used on the illustrations of "Leaf Man" were collected all over the U.S. by Ehlert and friends and color photocopied to retain their beautiful colors until she could create the illustrations for the book. What a great way to preserve the leaves--I wouldn't have thought of that!

Fall Leaf Prints and Art Education Musings...

Around this time of year, I have a project I like to keep on hand for early finishers. I've posted about it before and it is originally from Deep Space Sparkle. When I first saw this project, I thought "WOW! How striking and different!" I love the contrast between the white leaves and the black paper. The colors in the negative space really pop!

The project is easy-to-do and once you give a quick-demo, students from first grade through fourth are good to go and can do the project themselves (my kind of early-finisher project!). Here are some of the results from my "Fall Into Art" Class....

I super-love these! They look so nice!

But...I noticed something after this last class did this project. Maybe it is because I'm going for my Master's and have been reading all sorts of articles about creativity in children and revamping arts programs and all that (that stuff will mess you up! ;-) ), but I think I may need to alter the way I present this lesson...

• Children always ask: "Why are we painting the leaves white? They aren't white--they are beautiful colors!"
• And I think, "Hmm. You're right, children. But trust me, the project is awesome and the white leaves look so great with the black paper....really...you can put all those beautiful colors in the background..."
• And then a few always say, "But do we HAVE to do it this way?"

So, I did an experiment...I reversed the colors and changed the papers and tried it in a way that would seem more real to the students and allow them to observe and connect with the colors outside the window and represent that in their work...here's what I got:

So above you'll see my test of different colors of construction papers with the revised color combinations. I think the light blue works well, BUT, I *absolutely HATE* the new temperas I bought from Michael's--they no longer carry the brand I like there and these are seriously the worst (and the only choice at our local store). So, I'm sure that when you all do your versions with quality temperas you'll be much happier.

The revised version isn't as striking as the Deep Space Sparkle original, I truly do love her version more, but this version above might be one to keep in mind when working with with younger students and getting them to really look at the world around them. Just some food for thought...

BTW: The image above was marked up using Skitch, an APP for the iPad. I love it! Although this isn't the best representation of what you can do with it.

"Drawing With Light" at the NHAEA Fall Conference 2013

It's that time of the year again! Fall colors and the NH Art Educator's Assoc. Fall Conference!

I love going to the conference and connecting with art teachers from all over the state! It's truly inspiring! And this year was no exception!

My morning session was "Using Photography in the Elementary Classroom." This session was led by Katie Poor, a teaching artist currently working at the Providence Children's Museum. She began by describing a lesson on cyanotypes that she teaches. Then she walked us through a very interesting lesson where she teaches children to "Draw With Light" using flashlights and digital cameras. She brought in some digital cameras of her own and we spent the remainder of the session experimenting with the technique.

She showed us a few examples--the most famous, I guess, would be Picasso from LIFE magazine in 1949. Check out the link to see all of the inspiring images...

We experimented by making shapes, squiggles, letters, drawing images (which are actually harder than it looks), and entire words...while we played, I think we all started thinking of ways this could be used across the curriculum.

My session partner and I experimented with using the white board and a dry erase marker to draw the idea first (either an image or a word) and then use the flashlight in our hand to "trace" the dry erase marker lines we had made on the board. You can see an example of this further in this post (the "art rocks" image) and a few more of our experiments on Katie's blog (link below). We were MUCH more successful doing our "drawings" this way versus trying to imagine an image and draw it freehand in front of us like Picasso did. After trying to draw freehand, I REALLY appreciated Picasso's drawing with light images!

To check out the photos from the session and see what we did, click on Katie's link:
http://photographerintheclassroom.tumblr.com
And just look for the most recent posts (there are two that contain our examples).

I was fortunate to bring my camera from home to the session (it was in my mobile art closet/minivan so I was able to grab it). I had Katie advise me on setting my aperture and shutter speed and, although my camera isn't as fancy as the ones she brought (her cameras allow for 30 seconds of exposure, but mine allows only 16 seconds), I was able to go home and have my children "Draw With Light" a bit.

This is such a fun lesson, I really think I'll need to get into a classroom and teach this soon!

Thanks, Katie, for the great idea!

This should say "art rocks" but my my camera only allows for
a shutter speed of 16 seconds--I bet I could have traced the whole
word if I had tried again (the more successful attempt is on Katie's blog).

3-year-old draws a circle

6-year-old tries for a square
(it's harder than it looks!)

6-year-old tries for a star

Fall Compositions With Elmer's & Pastels

Fall is my favorite season and I have been LOVING driving my hour-an-a-half drive up to my Grad School twice (sometimes three times) a week...I pop in a book on tape and enjoy the beautiful fall folliage that New Hampshire has to offer! Ahhhh!

The focus of my after school art class for my 1st-4th graders is "Fall Into Art"--fall-themed art activities...last week, we drew apple still lifes inspired by Cezanne, and this week we took advantage of the nice weather and beautiful fall displays outside the school that had been donated by the Amherst Garden Center in Amherst, NH. The Garden Center had flanked the entrance of the school with pumpkins and gourds, hay bales, scarecrows, and beautiful mums! I couldn't ignore all of the visual stimuli out there ready to draw!

We spent some time looking and touching the displays, then we sketched them. We moved inside and selected one the things from our sketches to "draw" on black paper with Elmer's glue. The students were VERY skeptical when I told them we'd be drawing with Elmer's and you should have seen the surprised looks when I did my demo and piped glue along the lines of my drawing!

I had seen this Elmer's glue/pastel combination online before but had never tried it. I think it would be great for winter snowmen as well...

Anyway, we let the Elmer's glue dry (they rode around for a week in the back of my minivan--the mobile art studio.

The next week, I showed the students how to color in the non-Elmer's areas--the negative space--with the chalk pastels, encouraging them to add highlights and shadows to make their pictures really "pop" and look more realistic. I suggested using my "use at least three colors in each section" rule...

The students were VERY pleased with this new "technique" and, at the end of class, we discussed some other compositions they could use this technique on. The fourth-graders were very specific with their questions about materials: where I purchased the materials, what they are called, how much they cost. They want to make sure the next time they go to Michael's Crafts Store they purchase the proper things so they can do this technique again--THAT (to me) is a sign of a successful art lesson--my students wanted to take something they learned in class and go with it.

Enjoy!

Cezanne's Apples and Composition

We are all into fall over here and I thought this week would be a nice time to do a still life with apples with my after school art class. This is the first time we've met this school year, and the group has 1st-4th graders in it. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, it's actually a combination of two lessons I saw out there:

My 1st grader's example with Cezanne's reproduction.
I can't show you the still life--he ate it!

"Still Life With Oil Pastels and Baby Oil" (2 posts) from Fine Lines
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/still-life-with-oil-pastels-and-baby.html
http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/04/oil-pastels-and-baby-oil-part-2.html

That was pretty much the lesson I used, but I modified my talk in the beginning to be about Paul Cezanne's work showing them "Still Life With Apples."

I then used the talk I found on That Artist Women: "Open vs. Closed Composition"
http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2011/09/open-vs-closed-composition.html

I really like how she shows real art examples in her post. I showed those to my kiddos as well.

Then I gave them time to experiment with arranging the apples (and one girl's donated pear) into closed and open compositions. There were three students to a table and the table needed to agree on a composition they liked best.

And then we were off! I walked them through drawing, demoed how to use the oil pastels and baby oil, and gave a quick watercolor demo.

These are their creations! Beautiful! They are so proud (me too!).

Enjoy!

Welcome Fall! Birch Tree Project

The leaves are starting to change up here in New England and I love it! I was looking in our local paper this past weekend and they ran a great article about vacationing in Minnesota written by Laurie Hertzel and I just LOVED the beautiful images! Check it out here at the Star Tribune.

This beautiful photo, below, caught my eye especially, since the Birch Tree is the state tree of New Hampshire. 

This photo of birch trees in the Fall taken by Laurie Hertzel at the Star Tribune
inspired this birch tree craft.

This project uses a couple of fun techniques. First, the black lines of the birch bark are made using a hair comb (I saw that on the blog ARTASTIC: Miss Oetkin's Artists), and second, the colorful leaves are sponge painted on the background paper. It's quick, easy, fun, and just a bit messy. I hope you enjoy this craft and this crisp fall weather!

NOTE: I had my son create the birch trees on paper that was being held vertically and then place them on a background that was horizontal--this allows you to have the tree trunks touch the edges of the paper if your child puts them on tilted--some other lessons don't allow for this and there's a gap at the bottom edge of the trees. Sorry, no floating trees here!)

Fall Birch Tree Paint Project

Supplies Needed:

• 1 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of white card stock
• 1 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of yellow card stock
• Tempera paints in black, yellow, orange and red
• A plastic hair comb
• A 1" piece of clean sponge
• An old magazine to use as a palette
• Newspapers for your work surface
• Scissors
• Elmer's glue

Directions:

1. Make the trees: begin by placing the white card stock vertically on your work surface. Put a little of the black tempera paint onto the magazine palette. Dip the teeth of the comb into black paint and scrape it across the surface of the white card stock back and forth horizontally. Make sure you don't use too much paint or you'll get large areas of black on your trees. Also, make sure you go right off the page--you'll be using all of the white paper, so you'll want those little black scratch marks to be all over. Once you are satisfied, set the paper aside to dry.

2. Make the leafy-background: place the yellow piece of card stock on your work surface horizontally. Remove the page of the magazine that had your black paint on it so you have a fresh page. Put a bit of red, orange, and yellow on the palette. Dip your sponge into the paint and dab it all over the yellow piece of card stock. Don't blend the colors too much, or goop on the paint too thick. Check out the photo above to see how the colors blend. When the background is covered to your liking, set it aside to dry.

3. Cut the trees: Take your scissors and cut the white card stock into long, vertical strips (they should be 11" long by about 1/2"-1" wide). These don't need to be perfect, they are your trees, so don't get out a ruler and measure them! Cut strips out of all the white card stock (you may not use all of these trees).

4. Put a line of glue down the back of the birch tree strip and place it onto the horizontal background. The birch trees will extend past the edges of your background, but that is OK, it allows for you to tilt the tree a bit, as in the picture (and real life). Glue as many trees as you would like to your background.

5. Trim the excess bits of the trees that extend beyond the background and discard.

Enjoy this lovely bit of fall!

Last Minute Fall Projects For Older Children

I've been traveling all over these last couple of weeks enjoying some time with kids of all ages! I have been carrying around a couple of projects for my older students to do once their class projects have been completed. Two of these projects are self-directed and able to be set-up, executed, and cleaned-up by the children themselves. Love that!

Both projects are VERY much worth trying. Take a few minutes and try them out yourself!

Leaf prints: a great project I saw online and tried with my older kids this week was one I saw on the blog Deep Space Sparkle. Paint leaves white and print on black paper. Use a sponge to print colors such as red, green, brown, yellow and orange in the negative space around the leaves. This is an easy, but striking, piece. For more info, check out her post here.

Here are some of my students working on the Leaf Print project
from Deep Space Sparkle--they all loved how they came out. Me too!

Symmetrical Leaves: I had a big bag of leaves I carried around with me these last two weeks. I used them for the preschoolers to observe and match, the Kinders made leaf rubbings from them, the Elementary students used them in the leaf printing project above, and my private art students drew them. We cut the leaves down the middle using scissors, glued the half leaves to paper and drew the missing half back in with pencil. This is harder than it looks! It was a great project to do during that transition time between projects or while another project dried.

The drawing on the right were done by my 9-year-old student.

Enjoy these easy projects that celebrate Autumn!

Paper Mosaic Skull

Here's a quick little project that can be used in a variety of ways. These are 1/2" paper squares, but you could scale the pattern down to use 1/4" squares for a smaller skull. Mosaics have a definite art history link, but also tie in with math. This might be a good project to create when you have a couple of free minutes of downtime in your classroom or in your day (pack a less messy version of the project for your child to do at the doctor's office or in the car).

This skull was cut out and glued to two pieces of background paper--
a torn-edged orange and a black for a bit of contrast.

Here are the basic instructions followed by a couple of variations.

Skull Mosaic

Supplies Needed (for very basic version):

• Graph paper
• Pencil
• Sharpie
• Paper grid/pattern printed on copy paper
• 1/2" construction paper squares in white and black
• 1/4" strip of white construction paper
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Piece of construction paper (or patterned paper) for background (your choice of color(s))

Directions:

1. Using my example as a guide, create the skull "pattern" on graph paper. I made my squares 1/2" for my 5-year-old. Darken the grid lines with Sharpie so they will reproduce well. I used an ultra fine tip to show the division of the squares, but then a regular sharpie to bold the edges of the different sections of the design (edge of skull, eyes, nose, and mouth). Slightly shade the areas of your design that you would like to be black, so the children know to place black squares on those areas. I cut the skull pattern out and glued it to black construction paper so the children would know where the edge of the skull was and disregard the background.

The larger image in this photo is the pattern I made on graph paper,
cut out and glued on a plain black background so I could photocopy
it for the children. This keeps the background plain so they can focus on the skull.
The smaller image is a copy of my skull pattern, copied at 50% to make 1/4" squares
in the mosaic (good for bookmarks or a pin or something).

2. Photocopy the grid onto plain white copy paper.

3. Use glue stick to glue construction paper squares directly onto the photocopy paper. Light areas of the grid get white construction paper squares glued to them and shaded areas get black squares glued to them. Cover the entire skull pattern on the copy paper, but leave the negative space (background) around the skull blank.

4. When all of the squares of the skull are glued down, you can use the 1/4" strip of white paper to divide up the mouth area so that it looks like the skull has teeth. We just eyeballed this part. Attach the pieces with glue stick.

5. When all of your gluing is done, use the scissors to cut around the outside of the skull, cutting away the extra copy paper. Flip the skull over and put glue on the back. Place the finished skull on the background paper (this gives the piece a more finished look).

Other variations:

I used 1/2" squares for my 5-year-old to do this project, but you could use 1" squares and make a bigger skull (or increase the square size even LARGER and make one for the wall). Another option for older children, is to decrease the size of the squares to 1/4" to make smaller skulls to create a pin, bookmark, or to use as a decoration for a candle. 

If you want to create the mosaic to Mod Podge on a clear glass object (for a candle holder, etc.). Use your paper grid pattern as a guide, but layer some tracing paper on top of it and glue the paper pieces to the tracing paper. Then trim the excess tracing paper and Mod Podge the tracing paper (with attached paper mosaic glued to it) to the glass object you want. This is a process I've used a lot in my teaching, you can check out a similar post where we use tracing paper as a substrate for the paper mosaic pieces but we Mod Podge it to wood.

I hope you enjoy this quick little project with its many variations! If you use this project, be sure to send me your thoughts and photos so I can post them here--I'd love to see how YOU used this idea!