ABC...Easy As Handmade Paper and Printmaking....

This was such a super cool lesson to do with Kindergarten Classes. We had the kids make handmade paper with paper from our scrap box using mold and deckles. Note: be sure you tear the scrap paper into small pieces and allow it to soak a bit before you put it into the blender (I caught one on fire at the first school I taught at way back in 1990.....LOL) Ok, so we did a whole unit on handmade paper and then we took a few sheets in different colors and went to the school's die cut machine and cut our the alphabet.  We had a large sheet of homemade paper that we made on a window screen by squirting the paper pulp on the the screen with a turkey baster. Yes, this was sooooo much fun! By the way, did you know once the paper gets pretty dry you can iron it to make it flat. Yep, you sure can. We do it all the time when we teach this unit. Also, you can add things to your paper pulp vat like glitter, flowers, sequins and such. We have added green tea bags before to our vats...the paper turns out really hippy hippy towny freak granola good! 

With Easter having just passed....we did a mini unit on Leonardo Da Vinci...The Last Supper....remember good ole' Leo wrote backwards....so we did a printmaking technique by allowing the kids to use pencils and Styrofoam meat trays to write an upper case letter of the alphabet and a lower case letter of the alphabet. (EX: Aa, Bb, Cc) This was such a good lesson for them, because when we went to print them....they printed out backwards - but hey, it was OK... because Kindergarten's are just learning how to really write their letters. (I call this organized chaos in my classroom....I always have a plan in place...it might not seem like it, but I do...I promise) We didn't want to teach them how to do it backwards - so we did a spin of printmaking and Leonardo all in the same lesson. We created this piece of art and sold it at our HCES Gala. Kinda cool, don't ya think!

We place the handmade paper die cut letters on top of the printmaking alphabet. We then framed and matted it. If you would like more information on how to make handmade paper click here. If you would like to learn a little more about basic printmaking techniques check it out here. On this site, you will find the top 10 common questions asked about Leonardo's painting, The Last Supper.

Alright-y then, this is 1969 saying....Happy Marvelous Monday! All of you out there that are coming off of Spring Break...don't get Summer'itce yet because we have one more quarter to go! I am just thinking of all the funky and creative things that me and 1965 can post from now until summer! Hang on...this soul sista train is just gettin' going!!!! Chuga Chuga Woo Woo...until next time....x0x, Kim 1969