Mosaics

There's nothing super-original about mosaics, but it's always fun, and Philadelphia happens to be home to Isaiah Zagar, a fantastic local artists who creates beautiful mosaic murals all over the city.  Here's his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Zagar  

and here are some examples of his work:

                                        

After a brief discussion about mosaics and how they are made, Preschool and Pre-K experimented with a variety of objects to make their own mosaic tile...

I used a pretty standard airdry clay, it worked really well.  I would not recommend playdough, because it tends to crack as it dries, and it will stick to the table.  I gave them an assortment of beads, clear plastic pieces, tiles and buttons, but really anything you have laying around will work.

...I would also recommend flouring the table first, or working on something that can be removed after the project is complete, because I did have a little trouble getting the tiles off of the table.  

...It was also fun to teach them how to make patterns and imprints in the clay using either clay tools or some of the textured beads.  One of my students actually worked almost entirely with imprints.

These were the final pieces, and I am very excited about them.  The kids had a really great time with this project, and I think we are going to try to work with clay more often.