Metal Tooling

I love these! I got this out of Dynamic Art Projects for Children-Fantastic book, if you are in the market for new books. Fifth and sixth grade students had a social studies unit on Mexico, so we talked about the arts of Mexico. Students chose and animal and made several sketches of the animal. I chose one, and they enlarged in on 12x18 paper. They cut the animal out of the paper then they cut up styrofoam plates and glued the pieces down to form patterns and designs on the animal. I had old cardboard boxed stockpiled and I glued the paper animal with styrofoam pieces to the cardboard. This took forever, but I cut all of the animals out of the cardboard, I just was not comfortable with kids using razer blades. I am not a fan of blood. We covered the animals in aluminum foil and then the kids colored them with Sharpie markers. They were beautiful. I had parents tell me that they were making these at home as well.