Fall Harvest Bean Mosaics!

In The Sights and Sounds of the Season we welcomed the fall harvest by paying homage to all the colorful foods that could be used to create mosaics. I began by explaining that the history of mosaic art goes back some 4,000 years or more.  The Greeks began using this technique by arranging pebbles in precise patterns to create scenes of people and animals.  Later in Italy, wall mosaics were made using "Tesserae," tiny glass and terracotta pieces, which were vivid and reflected light.  Students were also shown examples of Byzantine and Islamic mosaics, which decorated glorious mosques, temples, and other places of worship.


After a brief mosaic history, I showed the students some of the materials we were using to create our own mosaics. They took turns identifying the items, as we used common dried foods like split peas, black beans, pumpkin seeds, rice, navy beans, kidney beans, and more.  I even passed around a spice jar of Anise stars and had them use their little noses to make their best guess as to what common candy they smelled like (Licorice!). 

This project took two classes and used the following supplies:
6"x 6" matte board or cardboard square
various beans, seans, twigs...etc
Leaves
white glue
warm colored tempera paint
string
hot glue gun/sticks


First: Each student was given at 6"x 6" chipboard square.  I showed students some leaves and asked them to identify what tree they were from.  Most were common like oak, maple, and birch.  They then traced the leaves onto their board (some did one, others did 2 or 3, depending on leaf size)

Next: Students filled in one leaf at a time with glue and covered the leaf area with dark colored beans or seeds.  They repeated this step with the remaining leaves.  They used light colored seeds and rice to fill in the background area. 


In the next class: To introduce warm fall colors into this mosaic, we added craft stick frames for the border.  Lastly, using red, yellow, brown, and orange tempera paint, the artists painted the frames and any empty spaces of their chipboard.  We even attached a yarn string to make these mosaics hangable decorations! Some chose to go without a string and use them for trivets.


Here are some examples of our Fall Harvest Bean Mosaics!

 
























                Cullen





       

                 Chloe

         Aidan

  

      


















          Eddie



            Jack



                Gaia



          Karlee

           Jake
        

























                   Levi





                   Maddy

       Megan


























           Meredith



























         Seth





        Beth
                                               
                                           Miss Vanessa

                     

                         These looked so artsy while

                  they were drying on newspaper all in a row!