Friday, November 26, 2010

4th Grade Recycled CD Snowflake Mosaic




I'm incredibly excited about this project.  Each year, I am asked to do a couple of winter themed projects that will hang during a couple school events that are geared toward the holidays.  I always seem to have a tougher time coming up with this kind of project.  I've done snowflake mosaics before with 4th grade, but I've always had the kids use little paper squares.  I always love to include recycled materials in my projects and I've been trying to figure out what to do with two large boxes of old computer CDs.  I finally came to this project.  

In class, we talk about snowflakes.  I like to bring in a discussion of geometry while looking at examples of the six sided flakes.  I showed students how to fold and cut construction paper to make a six sided paper snowflake.  The paper snowflakes were then glued onto chipboard that had been painted silver.  The excess chipboard is trimmed off next.  Finally, the CDs are added.  I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break up the CDs.  I tried all kinds of suggestions, but none worked very well.  I eventually decided to cut the CDs into strips with my big paper cutter.  The strips could then be easily broken into smaller pieces by students.  The CD pieces were glued onto the snowflakes with the shiny bottom side facing up.  I love the way this project turned out and the kids loved making it.  

3 comments:

  1. Brilliant idea! Thanks for sharing your ideas as you've helped me plan a couple of art lessons for my 5/6 class in Ottawa, Canada.

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  2. Nice. I save old CD's too. I blogged about them a while ago. I've used them as the wheels on cars, as bodies or heads on collage robots, in paintings about music, as centers of flowers, etc.

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  3. Beautiful! This technique could be applied to all sorts of different assignments too! thanks for sharing!

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