Community Mural

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

~John Donne

A community mural is a wonderful group project. This is an (Almost) No Prep Art activity because we use materials available to us and students create every aspect of it. Nothing is pre-cut or copied. We think the results are pretty awesome.

Materials:

  • Butcher paper
  • Tempera paint
  • Buttons
  • Sequins
  • Construction paper
  • Color
  • Copy paper

These are only suggestions. We use what we have in the room. Recycled materials also work really well. You can see in the picture that somehow googly eyes and puff balls got involved.  We must have put them in the wrong activity box.

Procedure:

Outline your streets and landmark with pencil. Assign different kids to paint the landscape. In the meantime the rest of the class starts to create houses, cars, and people. You can demonstrate how to do it or just see what they come up with.  The only thing that is very important is that the kids cut out their contributions completely. It sometimes takes them a while to understand that they cannot add their own background. We tell the kids to make the houses about the size of the palm of their hand but they still come out all different sizes. We arrange the artwork and the kids glue it on. Making a community mural?  We would love to feature it on the website! Have fun!

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