Collaborative crayon art - grade 5/6

 

My first ever collaborative/unity piece! If this blog is anything like real life, this entry will get the most comments of any entry. I say this because since I put these in the hallway, I have had nonstop comments on this project! Teachers, students, admin staff - everyone had stopped to compliment the kids on their work.

This HAS to be one of my favorite projects of all time.Not only is it visually quite striking, it has the added component of being a collaborative piece that students must work on together. I first saw it at Mini Matisse.

Before we even started drawing, we made a chain on the board of everyone's names, so that we would know who attached to whom. Following that, each student got a big piece of black paper, and a crayon tracer. The tracers are essential - it's the only way to make sure that the crayons remain uniform throughout the entire piece. They had to trace at least one crayon going from their paper to the paper next to them. Together, they had to chose what color they would use (and each student needed to do this on both sides of the paper!) Some students also opted to do crayons that fell off the page, using scraps of black paper to create the effect. 

They colored them in using oil pastels. Each student had a crayon or two at their desk to use as inspiration. Overall, this project took about 3 hours for the students to finish completely. Such a great idea!

You can see some of the tracers here, as well as some o the crayons that students used as inspiration.