Roman mosaic craft
We have invited friends to join us for a Valentine's Day party next week. That means that we have to actually have Valentines to share. In an effort to have it count toward history as well as art, I decided that we should make mosaic Valentines. We have been learning about ancient Rome, St. Valentine lived in Rome, and I have a nice picture book about the saint with the illustrations done in mosaics (Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda). So it all makes sense, right? I also checked some books out of the library with pictures of Roman mosaics that we looked at.
Here are some of the artists hard at work.
And a couple of the finished projects.
If you were to try this at home, here are a couple of suggestions. First, do all the cutting ahead of time. Even with a paper cutter, it took a little while to produce enough construction paper squares. Second, perhaps making a bunch of Valentines was probably a little over ambitious. In fact, most people made one or two and then moved onto other mediums to finish the many Valentines everyone needs to make. Everyone was very excited to start, but once they discovered the time-consuming, fiddly nature of the project, they were overwhelmed by the amount of work. I would give everyone just one or two 3x5 sized cards to fill. It really does take a while to stick on all the squares and I would make the ultimate project goals smaller. Lastly, while the littles had fun using glue, it really worked best for the 10 and up crowd. It takes some real manual dexterity along with patience to get the results the child wanted. If I were just doing little people I would use larger pieces of paper and larger squares of colored paper.
I will say, they all have a much greater appreciation for the amount of time and effort which went into the very detailed Roman mosaics now.
_____________
And, A. has a blog to show and tell about her cake decorating ventures. It's ABCakes. Take a look.
Here are some of the artists hard at work.
And a couple of the finished projects.
G.
If you were to try this at home, here are a couple of suggestions. First, do all the cutting ahead of time. Even with a paper cutter, it took a little while to produce enough construction paper squares. Second, perhaps making a bunch of Valentines was probably a little over ambitious. In fact, most people made one or two and then moved onto other mediums to finish the many Valentines everyone needs to make. Everyone was very excited to start, but once they discovered the time-consuming, fiddly nature of the project, they were overwhelmed by the amount of work. I would give everyone just one or two 3x5 sized cards to fill. It really does take a while to stick on all the squares and I would make the ultimate project goals smaller. Lastly, while the littles had fun using glue, it really worked best for the 10 and up crowd. It takes some real manual dexterity along with patience to get the results the child wanted. If I were just doing little people I would use larger pieces of paper and larger squares of colored paper.
I will say, they all have a much greater appreciation for the amount of time and effort which went into the very detailed Roman mosaics now.
_____________
And, A. has a blog to show and tell about her cake decorating ventures. It's ABCakes. Take a look.
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