painting the town red, blue, and lots more colors, too!
My 5th graders focused on using line to create shape, pattern, and unity during their first go round with me this year. I used the work of the collaborative group Boa Mistura as the inspiration for this project. They work with communities around the world to beautify public places and to bring communities together through these projects. We watched a video about their work with the community of Las Americas, outside of Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico. I have a big student population with Mexican roots, so they were pretty stoked to see work taking place in Mexico. We got to see a little bit of the planning of a project like that and the teamwork that goes into making it actually happen. Boa Mistura used patterns that were from earlier civilizations of the region.
After viewing the video, I let the kids know that they would be planning a mural composition for the homes across the street from school. We looked at the buildings with google maps street view and sketched a couple of them out on practice paper. I then provided them with pattern examples from a variety of cultures that are present in our school community. We also looked at a mural the 5th graders did with me a few years ago that was inspired by our school community, too.
Students were to fill the architecture in their sketch with patterns. They did not have to copy the provided examples. They could use them as inspiration and/or modify them. They could create patterns based on their imagination and experiences.
Once their sketch was finished, they moved on to a larger sheet of paper and refined their design. Changes could be made, as long as they were not wholesale. I wanted to see a connection between planning and refining. They traced their contours with fine tip markers and then added color to the scene. I encouraged them to use color patterns and modeled how to press hard and soft to create more color variety.
We wrapped things up by writing about how they created unity, why they chose their included patterns, and what they had the most success with in the project.
Your students' designs are terrific. Will you be picking one or more of them to incorporate in a future mural? I'm curious how you decide on your mural designs.
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