I got this fabulous idea for making butterflies with folded paper monoprints from Art Project Girl.
It was SO easy. I used these microwave dishes (below) for paint - orange in one side, yellow in the other. (This dish is partially washed. My 4th and 5th graders love to wash dishes during lunchtime or during aftercare.)
The kids started painting a "B" on the right side of their papers with yellow, then filling it in and painting it again with some orange (same fat brush), folding and printing after each time they added paint. The yellow just really brightened up the orange and the kids loved it. After that, they used a smaller brush and some slightly watered down black tempera (in another dish), and they retraced the "B" and added designs, printing again after each addition. We (obviously) reinforced the meaning of the word "symmetry", which is currently on my Vocabulary board.
The kids will cut the butterflies out in their next art class and I think we'll be sponge-painting skies to glue them on, so they can fly to their valley in Mexico. Maybe we'll give them some branches to rest on, too. This lesson was/is particularly timely, because the 1st graders are currently learning about monarchs in their classrooms and are waiting to see a chrysalis hatch. Next week they will be going on a field trip to the Up Yonda Farm Environmental Education Center to visit the butterfly garden.Interestingly enough, the kids told me that the butterflies should have white spots on them and I said no. But I just looked at monarch pics and they kids were (of course) right; there are white spots on the black on the wings. So I think we'll take a Q-tip and paint some white spots when we glue them on the skies. And the kids want to add eyes, too, so it may have to be wiggle eyes. I hope the wiggle eyes don't ruin the look.
Thanks, Erica, for a terrific lesson.
