Busy Month! - Fun Line Names Continued

Its been a really busy month and I am finally finding time to blog a bit about what we have been up to. My first graders finished their Fun Line Names. They all turned out fantastically.

If you recall from my last post, students began by drawing their name large. We traced hard with black crayon. Then they added a variety of lines around each letter. The second week we painted our names with liquid watercolor. (In fact this is the watercolor I made from markers) I encouraged students to spread their colors into many different parts of the picture... let them flow into each other and see what happens.

 

The third week we glued our names to the center of a piece of black construction paper. It measured about an inch and a half to 2 inches wider than the white paper.

 

 

This last step was a bit tricky for some of my students so I went ahead and hole punched a series of holes around the edge (before I met with students) and from there they sewed color yarn through each hole occasionally adding a bead or a piece of patterned wall paper scrap. I mentioned that this was the "final line" we would be using to complete their work.

 

 

 

I loved the results from this project and it was really a great success for everyone. However let me emphasize that there is a LOT of prep work for this project. I found myself cutting lengths of yarn over my weekend to make sure I had enough for over 100 first graders. I think the results were worth it.

 

This project took 3 forty minute classes to complete. Sometimes you may need an additional week.

Materials:

6 x 15" white paper

10 x 18" black paper

black crayons

color crayons

glue

hole punchers

yarn in various colors

beads

pieces of random interesting paper

liquid watercolor and paint brushes