2nd grade Indian Elephants

This is one of those projects that I absolutely adore and it all came together during the last week of school. We were pressed for time, so there was some tracing involved (eek, bad art teacher!!), but I feel that in light of that, the student's creativity was not stifled since they had millions of design decisions to make to complete their Indian elephant.

Day #1: I pre-cut lots of colorful, thin cardboard boxes like cereal, pop, etc. into 1" strips. I also had some leftover paintings that weren't being used and cut those down as well as some construction paper. I taught students how to weave. I loved seeing them get it, because as we all know, weaving is no easy feat when you are young! The final step to make the weaving stay together was a dot of glue underneath each loose end on front and back sides.

Day #2: Students chose either black or gray construction paper and traced an elephant shape. These were cut out and a colorful blanket was added. Students used whatever materials they wanted to add the facial features and decorative details. The final touch was bling....in the form of sequins. They loved this! I also had some small squares of paisley patterned paper they could choose to use to add emphasis to the border.