Wrap-Around Snakes

This is a great project I did with my fourth graders to teach them about overlapping. It is also a great project to teach kids about the power of MISTAKES while making art. As you can see on some of my examples here, some of these snakes have some....er...issues. Some of the students didn't realize they made a mistake until after they were through tracing in Sharpie and started painting...in some cases, tears flowed. The great news is, though, that you probably wouldn't have even noticed they had made mistakes unless I pointed them out, right?! It gave me a perfect starting-off-point to focus on emphasis...to take the viewer's eyes off the mistake and onto another part of their painting! In most of their cases, they added some extra-snazzy designs to the snake's body and used brighter, bolder colors.

In the end, I wouldn't have traded their mistakes for the world, they made for a great teachable moment! We used Crayola Watercolors (the 16-color set) and a 12x18 sheet of white watercolor paper. Of course this can be adapted to any size :)