Mural Painting

I started teaching a new Garden Art class at school this month.  It is delightful and a lot of work.  The most time consuming part is prepping and then getting the pieces ready for display.  For this painting project I had a lot of help with the prep.

I have completely loved working with the students in a new way and coming up with projects every week that will work for grades K-6th.  I have found that most projects work with all ages with a little modification.   This project that you see here was my form of a mural. I work with whole classes and I couldn't quite figure out how to have 20 students paint on one mural all at once.  So, they're making a mural quilt.  When they're done they will all be mounted on a piece of plywood and displayed in the garden.  They turned out beautiful.

The first class I did this project  with was the kindergarten class.  The assignment was very structured.  I showed them Georgia O'Keffe paintings and they were all asked to draw a close up of a flower.  They were also told to fill up the entire square.  No white paint showing.

This class shown here is a little older.  I told them to pant something they like in the outdoors.  I also put around the same inspirational pictures that I used in Kindergarten.  I thought the paintings came out beautiful.  I loved watching the focus  and complete absorption of some of the same students who often have a difficult time focusing.