First Grade: Mexican Plates

My First Grade classes made Mexican Plate Collages.  They also studied Mexico to prepare the students for the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition coming to the High Museum in February. The students looked at the colorful Fiber Art, specifically rugs, that come from Mexico to get ideas for their placemats.  They drew patterns with oil pastels and painted over their patterns with tempera cakes to create a paint resist for their placemats.  Then, they painted something from nature as the emphasis for the plates.  They used oil pastels to draw a line pattern behind their emphasis.  Next, they traced a circle on their painted paper and another on a plain colored paper.  They cut them out and glued their plate design on the the plain paper to make the plate.  Finally, they glued the plate on the placemat.  Fantastic!