Make Marvelous Marble Marquetry

15401 Marble Paper - OrgBlue Mosiac

Marquetry is the art of using thin pieces of veneer to craft beautiful images and patterns. Now you can create your own beautiful marble marquetry! 

Age: 5+

Duration: 15-30 minutes

Learning Outcomes: Practice fine motor skills while you cut and fold. Encourage early geometry by talking about different shapes, patterns, and types of symmetry.

You’ll Need:

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This craft looks like marquetry, but it actually combines a marquetry effect with a technique we call Shapegami. Start by downloading and printing the Shapegami Folding Instructions. This set of instructions includes step-by-step folding instructions for ten different shapes, basic geometric vocabulary, and design ideas. Start by taking the time to discuss different shapes and their attributes! Each of these shapes can be folded with an 8 1/2 x 11″ sheet of paper AND with the special sized rectangles in the marquetry template.

Once students are familiar with the different shapes, they can practice folding them with white printer paper and start thinking about the design they want to make with their shapes. Students can design their own marquetry designs, or choose from the Shapegami idea list. I decided to create a flower design using folded kite shapes.

Once students feel confident, break out your Marble Paper and download the Marble Paper Marquetry Template. It may take some experimenting to see which way you need to put the craft paper into the printer so the lines print on the white side. I used the orange and blue sheets to create a strong color contrast, but you can choose any sheets you like!

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Start by carefully cutting out the variously sized rectangles. To make each size easier to find, I sorted my rectangles by size as I cut them. Once your rectangles are all cut out, it’s time to start folding! I folded all my rectangles into kite shapes, keeping them arranged by size. This makes it easier to compose your marquetry design.

To create your marquetry design, start with a piece of white paper. Beginning with the largest of my kite shapes, I used loops of tape to secure each shape to the paper in the design I wanted.

Simply repeat this process using progressively smaller folded shapes, and you will have created a beautiful piece of geometric marquetry art!

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Spotlight On: Stand-Up People

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Create cute, miniature people who can stand on their own two feet!

These sturdy card stock figures are terrific for a multitude of different art projects and as components in presentations for other subjects. Use paint, marker, crayon, pencil crayon and collage materials to decorate your stand-up person. The large size (7 1/4 x 11 1/2″) is perfect for bringing out the fine detail in your artwork.

Use these art bases for “All About Me” art! Glue a photograph to the face of a figure, and decorate the body to resemble your favorite outfit. Finish by writing your name on your stand-up person so your classmates will always recognize you!

Create an abstract self-portrait! Try using our paint pad with tempera paints to create a colorful base. Then gently press a card person into the paint. Remove, and allow to dry. Then tape a photograph of yourself to the face! For more about using our paint pad to make beautiful pints, check out this blog posts.

A great first week of school activity is pairing students off and challenging them to introduce their partner to the class! Have students interview each other, and create a portrait of their partner to present to the class along with personal facts like age, favorite food, and favorite color!

Are written book reports starting to become a grind? Add a new dimension to them by challenging students to create a portrait of their favorite character in their book. The portrait can serve as a visual aid to help keep other students engaged.

Bring social studies to life with historical figures! Consider assigning each table (or group) a theme, and each student will create a portrait of a different historical figure. If students have a math theme, they might create figures of Ada Lovelace and Pythagoras. A science theme could include Einstein and Marie Curie.

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Create a Craft Circle Giraffe!

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This adorable critter is simple and fun to make!

Age: 5+

Duration: 10 Minutes

Learning Outcomes: Exercise fine motor skills. Practice composing figures out of geometric shapes. Create adorable animal crafts.

You’ll Need:

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  1. Decide what kind of animal you want to make. We chose to make a giraffe!
  2. Using the double color card sheets. draw an outline of the giraffe’s head and neck. Cut out the outline. Use washable markers to add eyes, a mouth and spots!
  3. Choose a craft circle to be the body of your giraffe. Fold the craft circle in half.
  4. Glue the head and neck to the back of your folded craft circle.
  5. To make the legs of your giraffe, cut four equal lengths of brown yarn.
  6. Tape one end of each piece of yarn to the INSIDE of the folded craft circle.
  7. Cut four squares out of brown card. These will be your giraffe’s hooves. Tape each square to the loose end of the yarn legs.
  8. Use a smaller length of yarn as the tail. Tape the tail to the inside of your half circle, near the crease.
  9. Using your glue stick, glue your half circle closed. This will make the giraffe look neat, and prevent flapping in the breeze if you decide to transform your giraffe into a puppet.

Ideas

  • Use Popsicle sticks to turn your animal into a puppet! Use a Popsicle stick for the body, and additional ones on any legs you want to be able to move.

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Natural Materials Cuff Bracelet

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This wearable art is a terrific fashion statement!

Age: 5+

Duration: 10 minutes (excluding drying time)

Learning Outcomes: Learn about the textures and properties of natural materials through manipulation of paper and card board. Exercise fine motor skills.

You’ll Need:

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Before metalwork became commonplace, jewelry was made with natural materials like wood, bone, leather and porcupine quills. Bone and wood beads could be strung on leather strips, but porcupine quills have to be softened before they can be used. Additionally, rawhide can be wet down, molded and once dry will keep it’s shape. Finally, wood can be steamed to the point where you can bend it! Our version of this craft doesn’t use real rawhide, but students can experiment with paper-based versions of rawhide wet-molding and wood bending.

First cut a 2″ strip of the leather design craft paper and set it aside. You will need it later.

To start, mix a solution of 1/2 a cup of white school glue and 1/2  a cup of tap water. Warm water makes mixing easier, but cool or cold water works too. Just make sure you mix the glue in completely, so there are no gluey lumps in the solution. Once your solution is thoroughly mixed, submerge your craft stick in the mixture for up to 90 seconds. To make this process easier, we used the lid of one of Roylco’s beautiful bins!

Once the craft stick is soaked, pull it out of the solution and start to gently bend it into a circular shape. Just like traditional bending wood, your craft stick can still break if it dries out or if you bend it too quickly. Carefully place the bent craft stick inside an empty Play-doh® container so the bracelet will keep its shape. Allow to dry for at least two hours.

Once the craft stick is dry, remove it from the Play-Doh® container. Lay the 2″ strip of paper in your glue and water solution for a second or two and then gently roll the sheet over the outside of your craft stick. Fold the edges inside so the paper is smooth over top of the craft stick. This technique is similar to wet-molding, and because there is glue in your solution, the paper will be firmly glued to your craft stick once everything dries. Place the paper-covered craft stick back in the Play-Doh® container.

Once the bracelet is dry, decorate it with pencil crayon, marker, crayon or paint. Or try cutting out collage shapes from other sheets of craft paper and glue them on to your bracelet.

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Make Miniature Moccasins

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Create adorable moccasins that make a great take-home craft! This craft helps immerse students in Native American and First Nations cultural garb. We have included two templates: a larger one for take-home crafts and a smaller one that creates moccasins to fit on dolls!

Age: 5+

Duration: 10 minutes

Learning Outcomes: Explore Native American and First Nations cultural heritage. Learn about the ways natural materials were used to make practical and beautiful items. Exercise fine motor skills by cutting and folding.

You’ll Need:

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Traditionally, moccasins are made of soft leather (usually deer, although native peoples in Alaska often used seal or caribou leather, depending on the resources available; for more information check out this cool museum!), and are decorated with beads, porcupine quills or fur. Each culture has their own unique styles and designs for moccasins, but the basic design includes a sole (the bottom of the moccasin) and an upper that is stitched together at the top. Some designs also include a vamp (the middle piece that covers your toes and the top of your foot).

Etymologically, the word moccasin derives from the Algonquian language Powhatan word makasin (cognate to Massachusett mohkisson / mokussin, Ojibwa makizin, Mi’kmaq mksɨn), and from the Proto-Algonquian word maxkeseni (shoe).

To create your own moccasins, start by downloading the moccasin template, and printing it out on a sheet of craft paper. It may take some experimenting to see which way you need to put the craft paper into the printer so the lines print on the white side. We used the deer hide design for our moccasins, but you can choose your favorite paper!

The Miniature Moccasins template needs two sheets of paper to create one pair of moccasins. The Doll Moccasin template needs one sheet of paper to make two pairs of moccasins.

Once you have printed out the template, students can use marker, crayon, glue and collage materials to decorate their moccasins if they want. I suggest decorating before you assemble the moccasin! Once you are ready to assemble your moccasins, cut on the solid lines, and fold on the dotted lines. Next, tape the vamp and upper to the sole of your moccasin. This part can be a little tricky, so we created a video to demonstrate:

Your moccasin crafts can be a final art product in and of themselves, or they can be added to presentations, posters and reports as visual aids.

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Spotlight On: Curlicue Rods!

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Weave, build and make shapes with these squishy, brightly colored sculpting rods!

The strands come in five vibrant colors that are perfect for color-coordinating activities.  Use indoors to make giant grids for rainy day math and sorting activities. Take them outside and make mazes, grids and play environments. Use inside to create play spaces! Each squishy strand is 3 meters (almost 10’) long to encourage gross motor development.

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The best part of rainy afternoons is making a fort! The length of these jumbo rods and their flexible cores make them the perfect material to string across chairs or book shelves to make forts. Each strand stays bent in place but pulls off easily. Curl the loose ends around something cylindrical to create adorable curlicue decorations for your fort!

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The bright colors of the strands are clearly visible inside and outside! Combine both fine and gross motor skills by challenging kids to weave the strands through a chain-link fence. This activity captivates kids and the results are beautiful!

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Twist one or two rods around themselves to create a colorful, funky hat!

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Need a brand-new kind of reading nook in your classroom? Simply twist and weave the long rods together to create a reading nest! Add a blanket or a pillow for comfort, and encourage early literacy.

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Whether indoor or outdoor these strands make the perfect foundation for big floor grids. Use for games, sorting, patterning and active learning!

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Spotlight On: Fraction Friends Mosaics

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These bright, beautiful circles are printed with fraction lines to create precise, proportional and pretty works of art!

Fraction Friends Mosaics are multi-purpose classroom tools! Designed with both art and math lessons in mind, these circles make a set of unique math manipulatives for early numeracy and a student’s introduction to fractions.

  • Sort and count the circles! The different textures and bright colors make the circles easy to see and differentiate from each other.
  • Practice fine motor skills while cutting out the different fractional pieces!

In art lessons, the pre-printed fractions allow students to cut out the perfect sized pieces to create 20 different animal friends, including:

To create these (and more!) fraction friends, simply cut the circles to the appropriate size, and use a glue stick to glue each animal together using a sheet of craft paper as a base to make take-home art! To add some pizzazz to your art, try using any of our rubbing plates to create a textured background for your fraction friend.

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Really Big Tangrams

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We scaled up these tans to scale up the fun of  solving tangrams!

Get ready to have fun with our Really Big Tangrams! You’ll have to make a lot of room on the floor for this huge version of the classic Chinese dissection puzzle. Learn to use mathematical principles by arranging the 7 pieces, called tans, to make geometric shapes and figures. It won’t take long to realize the puzzles are not as simple as they seem. Printed on durable, weather resistant material, Really Big Tangrams are perfect for group activities in the classroom OR on the playground. Let everyone work together to exercise creative strategies for practical problems. The included guide will get you started with three different levels of difficulty. Use our Really Big Tangrams as a teaching tool for 2D spatial relationships, working together as a team, and for active play!

What is a dissection puzzle? Dissection puzzles are puzzles that are made with tiles of varying sizes. The hallmark of dissection puzzles is that the pieces can be assembled to create two or more distinct geometric shapes. Dissection puzzles are as old as Plato, with the earliest puzzles being described in Ancient Greek texts. Tangrams came to the west in the 19th century (the 1800s) when American sea captain M. Donaldson brought a set back with him on his ship, the Trader, in 1815. These puzzles were less popular in the latter half of the 19th century, but saw a resurgence during the first world war.

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Tangrams can form all different kinds of puzzles! Some common themes are:

  • Animals
  • Plants
  • Buildings
  • Geometric Shapes

You can find some puzzle ideas in the guide included with these tans, but you can also visit your local bookstore for puzzle books. The internet is also a great resource!

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Marble Paper Art Tiles

15401 Marble paper - Yellow LeavesBring color and beauty to the classroom with these simple but beautiful tiles!15401 Marple Paper - Purple Leaves

The middle of winter can feel long and dreary, so lighten up the atmosphere by creating art tiles! These tiles can be used to create a beautiful bulletin board, classroom door or hallway display. Alternatively, they make a simple but beautiful piece of take-home art.

Age: 4+

Duration: 5 minutes

Learning Outcomes: Explore colors and textures. Mosaic abstract shapes together. Practice fine motor skills.

You’ll Need:

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Start this activity with a sheet of Marble Sculpture Paper. If this is a take-home activity, kids can cut their tiles to whatever size and shape they want. If you plan to use this for a classroom art piece however, it’s easier if all the tiles are the same size. Scraps of the paper can be effectively used as corner frames (like in the yellow tile) if desired.

We suggest using a paint tray in the center of a group table to keep the crafty leaves from flying everywhere. Older students can pop out the die cut leaves on their own. For young students, you may want to pop the pieces out beforehand and let the kids choose and glue them.

Using a glue stick, glue the leaves onto the tiles. Kids can choose to make abstract patterns with their leaves like we did, or they might want to create animals. You can choose a theme for everyone to adhere to, or let the artistic moment dictate decisions.

Once students have completed their tiles, they can either take their artwork home, or it can be used to create a spectacular hallway or bulletin board mosaic!

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$16.14 USD
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