Art class: collage

Last week's art class was filled with cutting, pasting, drawing and lots of talking. I read the book "Baby Rattlesnake" and we talked about patterns, especially the ones we saw on the borders inside the book. Each girl created a snake collage with desert backgrounds and patterned borders.

The night before class, I cut strips of wallpaper for the girls to use as borders around their paper. I used wallpaper sample books for all the patterned paper in this project. It was free and the kids loved sorting through the papers and finding different patterns. Instead of using glue sticks (I wasn't sure they were going to stick), each girl had a small paper cup filled with glue and a paintbrush for applying. This definitely took up a lot of time, but that was a good thing. They enjoyed "painting" with the glue and getting messy.

After the borders were glued on, we put the papers aside to dry and traced and cut snakes from templates. Some needed help since the snakes were curvy. (I'm very thankful for my assistant Tessa, who helps me fill water cups, clean brushes, wash hands, help with cutting, etc, etc.) After the snakes were ready, they cut and glued small pieces of paper to the snake.

We let the snakes dry, and in the meantime did some work on the backgrounds with oil pastels (which are wildly popular!). We talked about the kinds of things that are found in the desert, like cactus plants, mountains, rocks, sand. After the backgrounds were finished, the girls worked on gluing their snakes on and adding pattern to the borders.

It was a long and fun project that kept them busy for almost the entire class (which is 2 hours long). Can't wait to see what they create this week!