Monday, May 9, 2011
Yarn Painting
To top of our Mexican week (or two weeks, as it turned out) I had my 4th-6th graders work on yarn paintings. Funny story, actually. In our video on Mexican American Heritage, they did a demonstration on yarn paintings and how it is traditional to the Huichol Indians, etc. The students were so excited about yarn paintings that I changed my plan immediately. I was initially going to have them work on Papel Picado like the rest of the students, but decided to forego the plan and feed off their enthuasiasm. It payed off because many of my students tried very hard on this project and the results are beautiful. Mind you, the paper is only about 6x8", so they were finished before they had the chance to get bored with it.
Cool. I'm curious about your process. I've tried yarn painting with little success - a glue-y mess with sticky yarn sticking to our fingers. So how do you make this work successfully?
ReplyDeleteFor some strange reason, this project was outstandingly easy for the kids. I cannot explain it other than saying that the planets and stars must have been in perfect alignment during those classes - lol.
ReplyDeleteThe video I showed helped a lot, because they demonstrated drawing a line of glue on the pencil line, putting the yarn on the glue, and pressing the yarn down with a popsicle stick. I didn't even pass out popsicle sticks, but the kids used their pencils and the ends of the scissors to push the yarn down. I also told them that if they have a difficult shape, they should cut small pieces of yarn instead of trying to wrap a long strand of yarn around the entire shape.