The 2nd through 5th grade students are working with Lisa Arnold, our artist-in-resident to create a group mosaic. I wanted to have 1st grade work on mosaics too. I choose the theme of home for the students to create an image from. We reviewed the Kindergarten shapes and use circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles to draw the house with and create design. They used construction paper crayons on dark paper on day one.
On day two, I demonstrated how to use a ruler and we drew two horizontal lines, and two vertical lines on the back of their page. They then finished coloring and cut on the lines. They placed pieces of their house back together using negative space in between.
Tip: If you are working with many classes, ask them to write their teacher code along with their name. A teacher code might look like B-1 for Mrs. Bower's 1st grade class. I often use different colors of paper for each class as well. This way if they forget to write their teacher code on the back you still know what group the art belongs too.
