2nd Grade Henna Hands

I wrote this lesson about a year ago and this is the second time I've used it with my second grade students. It's a relatively quick project and it allows students to explore art from India. My school has a large Indian population, so this is an extremely popular project. 

Check out the lesson here!

2nd Grade Henna Hands

Wow. Absolutely outstanding work from a second grade boy!

This is an absolutely new lesson that I wrote specifically for this school year. My school is incredibly diverse (students from over 30 countries). We are celebrating that diversity this year with a Multi-Cultural Day next week. I decided that my part in that would be writing lessons inspired by various cultures around the world. This one is about India!


It was incredible when I first introduced this project. My Indian students were super excited to create artwork inspired by their culture. Many typically quiet students were sharing during our class discussion of henna art. 


After seeing many examples, my students did a little practice the first day of the project. I made a handout (check out the bottom pictures) and divided it into designs meant for wrists, palms, and fingers. It took a bit of practice, but my students got really good at the plant-based designs popular in henna. 


The final project included two traced hands with henna designs. After tracing the designs with brown sharpie, the hands were cut out and mounted on either green or orange paper. The mounting paper was then cut out to show an outline then glued onto the background paper. I was pretty happy overall with how this project came out. 


Check out the lesson here!