A "Giant" Happy Christmas Project

Each time we do a Winter Program at our school, each class is asked to create a decoration to put on the gym walls. Not only does this help with creating a festive atmosphere, it helps the students focus their excited holiday energy on something productive and fun.

This year I decided to dig out the Giant Card project. Not only does it cover several art objectives and forces the students to use their mathematical skills, it allows them to see how important their small piece is the to the success of the whole.

In my eleven years of teaching, I have only done this project twice before. It requires having the students practice copying an image, and then learning to enlarge a photo. I kind of had to rush through that part this year. The kids got about 10 minutes for both.

Next I show the students the card in it's whole form. This is the one this year:

 Next, I hand out small pieces to the students that are numbered so I know what order to put the picture together in. They look like this:

The students put their name on the back of their big blank white square paper and the tile number from the small cut Christmas card. This year I cut 6 inch by 6 inch squares for the students to enlarge their small pieces on. There are 36 squares from this card, and thankfully I had 18 students this year. So, each student did 2 squares. The final project turned out like this (Thanks to my lovely wife for gluing it all down):

I think that it turned out pretty good. If I were to do there this again, and I am sure that I will, I will have the kids work with the students who have tiles around theirs so that they can better align the picture. I also think that I will use a different card.

I hope that this post will inspire you to try something new.

Happy Holidays!

Later...