My students focus on a weaving project in second grade and by the time the unit rolls around, it’s usually very close to Valentine’s Day.
We were studying Picasso and so it made sense to talk about his Rose and Blue period. Placing both blue paint hues and red paint hues on the tables, my students create one piece of painted paper each.
You might be surprised to note that the majority of the class gravitated towards the pink and red tables. Not sure why I love watching this happen.
Once each student created one piece of painted paper, we cleaned up and I allowed the students to work on unfinished work with the remaining class time.
For the next session, we created a standard woven placemat by folding the painted paper in half and cutting strips to almost the edge. We used strips of colored paper to weave through the slits. Click here to see how to make a woven placemat.
When the placemat is complete, glue to a piece of paper so that placemat has stability. I used white paper.
For the kids who finished early, they used a few oil pastels to create some pretty designs on their placemats.
I’m going to be honest here. I assumed this would be the end of the project. I thought the pretty pink and blue placemats were wonderful, but then a funny thing happened. While I was helping one child with her weaving, a table of kids began cutting their placemats into hearts. I noticed this and suggested that they fold their paper first to achieve a symmetrical heart. They got busy creating the most wonderful hearts.
How fun is that!
Here are the pink editions of the woven placemats…
Want more Valentine’s Day art inspiration? Download our free drawing guide on this adorable duck and mixed-medium hearts!
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I am not an artist but I try to give my students some art projects every month. Can you tell me what kind of paper you typically use for tempera paint and for watercolor paint?
No problem. I use sulphite paper with all of my tempera painting projects and 90 lb watercolor paper for watercolor paints. Here is a PDF that lists the supplies I use most: https://www.deepspacesparkle.com/shop/art-supply-list-for-home-educators/
Love this! Getting supplies ready to do this. Thank you.
Did you show your students examples of Picasso’s rose period paintings? I can’t seem to find a good selection of examples that are appropriate for the elementary age student!
Yes, I did. Try wiki art.org. Great selection of art links.
Don’t the placemats fall apart when they are cut into heart shapes?
You might be missing the step to glue to white paper first 🙂
Hi! I’ve done this project twice now with my third graders and their hearts will not stay together! When the placemats are complete, we glue them down onto white paper. With my first class we used liquid glue. We put a line around the perimeter and an X going from corner to corner. This is a lot of glue, but I wanted the weaving to be secure. However, after the hearts were cut, strips of paper were falling out. With the second group of third graders I decided to use spray glue. This worked much better, but still not the best. Pieces were still falling out. Any advice? How did you have your students glue their placemats on???
Before you glue the heart to the background sheet try using a glue stick or a dot of liquid glue to tack the ends of each strip in the heart to the piece that runs behind it. If you get all of the ends nothing can move.
Mixed medium Hearts download link is incorrect 🙁
Hi Share! This is Bethany from Team Sparkle. Thanks so much for letting us know that there is an issue with the link. We are working on getting that taken care of, so please try again shortly. Thanks!