Clothesline Art
Verna Collett, Grade 1 teacher at Gordon Head Elementary, Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada
Project Progression
1. (first session) Brainstorm with class the things we are lucky to have here in Canada, in our homes, and list responses on chart paper and discuss (e.g. plenty of food, comfortable homes, toys, games, clean water, medicine, clothes, families, people to care for us and love us, hospitals, safe roads, etc.). Make a note of how long our list is, how we know our basic needs are being met. Children can illustrate some of their ideas following the discussion; my class wrote and drew journal entries.
2. (next day) Review and discuss the chart, deciding together which items are the most important, which are essentials. Mark these with stars. Talk about areas of the world where people don’t have these things…..and reasons why.
3. Show the children the pictures which were sent from Afghanistan (from 2003 and 2005); discuss these and explain to the children how the Global Arts project started. Guide the children to notice the differences between the art samples and identify how the second set of pictures (from 2005) depicts a more hopeful life. Develop the concepts of how we can understand pictures and art even without knowing the language of the country---art has its own universal language.
4. Ask children how art can make someone feel better. (The children had all drawn pictures or sent get well cards to someone.) Discuss how their art project will be sent to Afghanistan as an expression of our caring.
5. Develop a plan for the project. We decided to draw pictures of the things we wish others could have, the most important items on our list. Children chose which one to illustrate and they sketched on chalkboards how their topic (or choice) could be shown. We decided to include writing to express our wishes even further. A list of goals was created and connections with other curriculum areas and with other projects such as Earth Day were identified.
6. Teacher prepared triangle shaped mat boards for children to draw self-portraits and rectangular shaped mat boards for children to draw their wishes. (mat board were donated from a frame shop but any thick paper would do.) Children completed their drawings of self and wish.
7. Children wrote about themselves on paper to be glued on the back of the triangle shape, and about their wish for the world to be glued on the back of the rectangle. These papers were edited and shared within the class. (We kept charts of the project and reviewed these each day)
8. We decided to display the drawings by creating long “necklaces” with beads and paper spacers between the drawings. The paper beads were made by the children, rolling triangles of paper cut from magazine pictures; roll from the wide end around a pencil and glue the end, then slide off the pencil. The children and I rolled a wish or a happy thought or a dream of a better world inside each bead. The paper spacers were accordion folded and paper punched to add colour.
9. We assembled the class work into four strands, hanging these across the bulletin board to display them. We included an explanation of the process and the reason for the project in the lettering.
10. The class reviewed the charts and what we have learned and assessed how well we met our goals. We concluded that doing the project helped us feel better because we liked letting others know we care for them. Art is a way of communicating with children who speak a different language and sharing our thoughts and feelings with others.
11. We also were reminded to appreciate what we have and to consider which things we really need, and how many luxuries we have. The Afghan art helped us to focus on what is really important. We were proud of our project and our work, and recorded it in photos and by writing about it. As a review of the project, each child made a short strand of beads and wrote his or her wish for the world on an index card with the beads fastened onto one corner, to take home and tell our parents about the projects. There were many positive comments from parents and other classes.