2010: Art Project 8--Button Mosaics

The last project we tackled this summer was mosaics! I saw this post over at No Time for Flashcards: a fantastic blog with great craft ideas, sensory activities and book suggestions. It featured this photo:
I knew I didn't just want to show the girls this picture. I wanted to tie it more to art history. So I did some googling. I first explained that a mosiac was a picture made up of smaller things put together (kind of like a puzzle) to make a bigger picture. I showed them this image first:
I knew they would recognize Starry, Starry Night from our earlier summer project. They thought this was very cool! Then I showed them a couple others:
I told them you could make something real like an animal or person (like above). Or you could make a design like below:
And the last thing I showed them was Hagia Sophia, a church and then mosque (now a museum) in Turkey. The inside of the church is covered in huge beautiful mosaics. When the sun shines in the church windows, the metallic quality of the mosaic tiles gives off a gorgeous golden light.


After all that, I finally showed the girls this fish mosaic:
And finally the button fish mosaic. I told them they could make anything they wanted on their paper. I had gone to Michael's and bought two medium sized bins of mixed craft buttons. I sorted them by color ahead of time. And I gave the girls stronger poster board and Glue-all. Make sure you use an adhesive that will really stick to the buttons (or whatever medium you choose to use).
They thought about what they wanted to do. Lily picked a ladybug! So I drew an outline for her and she did the rest:
Ella decided she wanted to do a design. So I helped her think through what she wanted to do. We made a big circle and divided it into quadrants. Then she went to work:
Ella loved this project sooo much she proceeded to spend the next hour and a half making more creations! She nearly used up all the buttons!

Here are her other masterpieces:




I helped her with the outline of the butterfly and ladybug (Lily used up the red so she had to do yellow). The rest she came up with all on her own! (a penguin, bee and snowman, respectively)