Cut & Paste Old School

Scissors, Glue and Paper. How many hours of fun can you have cutting and pasting things? I know my son has gone through dozens of rolls of tape in the last few years. I have vivid memories of the old Five periods per cycle I am responsible for an Art class. For the last two weeks students have been creating mosaic pictures to reflect the social studies content of Angient Greece and Rome.

These grade 8 students are thoroughly enjoying this simple activity - it's very theraputic. They come to class, get their envelope of materials and start working without any guidance or instruction from me beyond the initial set-up. It's a very social activity - they talk, visit, listen to their music, and paste away. It's a nice time to visit with the students, to listen to their conversations learning about what's important or at least interesting to them at the moment.

  • Find an image: high contrast with a large, easily identifiable subject. National Geographic is a good source.
  • Make an enlarged copy of the original image.
  • Flip through the magazine and find other pictures that have similar colours as the original image.
  • Cut the coloured portions of these pages into small squares and glue them onto the enlarged copy.
  • Follow shape contours, fill in larger gaps with triangle pieces.
  • We took our time with this project and enjoyed the visiting time and the simple activity.

Later, when we're done, we'll take some measurements and calculate the enlargement ratio. We'll measure the surface area of one square, the surface area of the enlarged image, then use that to estimate how many squares were used. We'll look up minerals that could have been used in ancient times to create the colours and what chemical reactions are required to create coloured pottery when it's fired. Then we'll reflect on their engagement with the activity and assess achievement of the learning outcomes.

Or, we might just enjoy the social element of the activity and appreciate knowing each other a little better.

What do you think? Share you thoughts below...

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