Grade 1 – Mrs. Poteracki
Volunteer – Sheryl Osbourne
Project Synopsis:
This project is about an African tribe that paints their houses, and it ties in with a unit on Africa. It starts with Maya Angelou’s My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me. It’s a beautiful book about an 8 year old African girl whose best friend is a chicken. The kids love this. She tells about how her tribe (the women) paints their houses. Then, I gave the kids a turkey feather (from Michaels) to use as a paint brush to paint designs on a house template. They loved the feather, although we found that the feather worked somewhat like an ink pen and was better for design rather than filling in a block of color.
Materials Required:
Template, paint, feathers (quills)
Suggestions:
Give kids design suggestions (wavy lines, swirls, circle within circles, etc.) ahead of time. After I assembled the house (cut and tape after paint is dry) I hid a sticker under each house.
Note:
The activity took 45 minutes.