Want a project that’s just a little too hard, then gets a little too tedious for about 3-4 class sessions?  Then teach this one to your 2nd grade artists!  (After re-reading a similar post on Dali’s Moustache where they had spectacular results, next time I would encourage any size of cut paper as long as it got close enough to the initial that they could still see the initial.  This time we kept our shapes small.)

I wanted to do a collage project for 2nd grade.  Last year’s 2nd graders did some adorable Penguin Family collages.  It was a no fail project and they had a family portrait in the form of penguins.  (Blog post to come next year when I teach it again.  Stay tuned!)

This year, we looked at ancient Greek mosaics on the SmartBoard and discussed them and their techniques.

Then I showed examples of other 2nd grade Initial Mosaic student artwork that I found online.  Then we gathered in a parabolic shape (rainbow shape or semi-circle) when I taught them how to make a blocked-off bubble initial of their name.  They were impressed!

First you draw your capital initial really big so it fills up the paper.  Then you draw another initial even bigger all the way around your first one.  After that’s done, you erase the first initial (we called that one the skeleton initial since it supported the outer initial).  That left you with a big beautiful bubble letter initial.

The kids got their own dry erase boards and dry erase markers and practiced making their skeleton initials and then their bubble initials.  After making 3 successful bubble letters using that technique, we passed out the pre-cut black background paper.  They drew their bubble initials and got to work.

I demo’ed how to create a mosaic collage with paper.  They filled out their initials first with cut construction paper, then filled in the negative space with cut construction paper of another paper (of a high contrast color.)

They loved it and amazed themselves when they learned how to draw a bubble letter, but when we got to the cutting and gluing part (a huge part of this project), the fun dried up.  It’s tougher to motivate when it the work gets tedious.  See above note to myself it you teach it.)  🙂