With the first project I wanted to do something that would get their imaginations going, so we created quilt squares inspired by Faith Ringgold's "Tar Beach." I had originally posted this lesson here.
This project is great because the main character of the story is the same age as my students (about 3rd grade). In this lesson, the children are asked "where would you fly if you could go anywhere, real or imagined?" This project is a wonderful way to get to know my students--they come up with the best places to fly to! This project originally took two one-hour class sessions with my homeschool kiddos, but I only wanted to devote one class to this project with my after school kiddos. So, I downsized the project a bit. Here's how:
- For the background, we used 8" x 10" rectangles of mat board
- For their drawn image, we used a 6" square of white paper
- For the area they wrote on, we used a 2" x 6" rectangle
- The patterned paper pieces, we used 1" squares (as in the other post)
How'd it go?
I was very happy with the process! The prep was easy and the project very portable (that's important since I am an "art-on-a-cart" teacher. We had time to read the entire book, discuss it a bit and then take our time drawing where we would go if we could fly. After the initial discussion, the children just worked along. This was a bit of a larger group than the last time I presented this project (we had 13 Daisy Girl Scouts visiting the classroom), but it was a smooth-running lesson. Some of the children finished about 10 minutes early (we meet for an hour and fifteen minutes). Early finishers could look at quilt-related books or work on quilt coloring pages.
When they were done, I put all of the quilt squares together and magically our finished quilt appeared. Enjoy!
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| If I could fly I would go to... the moon, Atlantis, Hawaii, out for ice cream, to the beach, to Chihuahua Land, to a horse farm... |
