2011: Project 11--Mandala Drawings

Playing a little catch up today. I'm spending some free time getting prepped for our art projects this summer and realized I didn't post this mandala project. I did this project with the girls in Summer 2011. It was the last project and school started up. I just never got back to it. They seemed to enjoy this quite a bit. I had come across a CD mandala project on both Art Projects for Kids and Mrs. Picasso's Art Room. 

I gave the girls a little background on mandalas. The wiki explanation of mandalas compares Buddhist and Hindi mandalas with rose windows in Christian churches. That was the perfect thing for me to discuss with the girls. It piggybacked well with the stained glass project we created earlier in the summer. I didn't get into a major discussion on the symbolism in mandalas. I just explained to them that there are other religions besides Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism use mandalas as part of their religion, like Christians use stained glass windows. It was the easiest way I felt I could explain this to the girls. I showed them these examples (sorry, I don't have the sources anymore, but I did find them through a Google Images search for mandalas).

 

 

 

Instead of explaining the symbolism behind mandalas, I spent more time discussing the characteristics of the mandala. The circular shape, the pattern all the way around. I showed them examples from both of the blogs above. And then we got busy!

I started by dividing the CDs up into even spaces for the girls. I just used a permanent marker to draw the lines on.

This is how the girls found their workspace when I started the project:

After explaining to them that they would be creating the same pattern all the way around the CD. I gave them the paper with the "pie" piece drawn on it. I asked them to draw out a pattern, anything they wanted. Since we were using permanent marker on the CD, I wanted them to work their ideas out first.

I even had them color in their pie piece first so they knew what their colors would look like before starting on the disc.

Then I had them repeat their pattern on the disc with a fine-point permanent marker.

Here was my 5 year old's disc before coloring in:

And my seven year old's:

And finally, they colored in their mandalas. I gave them the option of continuing a pattern on paper outside the disc. But they both were tired after just doing the disc so we kept it at that. I used glue dots to adhere the discs in their art journals.

Here are the finished pieces: