Marine Collages

International School of Louisiana ISL DIXON

Kinder French Science Visual Arts

Ms. Dutron Mr. Malbrough

Ms. Dutron’s French Kinder class is working on a unit about healthy environments and pollution. The earth’s waterways and sea creatures have been the specific focus of this unit. We showed the students videos of sea turtles and other marine animals either getting caught in trash or mistakingly eating things like Styrofoam cups or plastic bags. To give the students some practice with collages as well as collaboration I drew two large sea turtles (roughly 2x3 feet) and separated them into two groups. I then gave each child a small ziplock baggy full of (cleaned) potato chip bag clippings. The students were then instructed to use the clippings to “color” the turtles for their groups. Each child was to completely finish one section of the turtle or its shell before moving onto a new section. The students quickly made up rules for each other like “only use red on this scale” or “the shiny side is for the bubbles”. I actually had to go in mid class and draw bubbles for the students since one pointed out that the turtles couldn’t breath otherwise lol. In the end there were almost no incidents and the students worked really well together, with each team coming up with their own unique turtle designs. The following class the students were given smaller drawings that they could now decorate individually using clippings as well as colored pencils for mixed media pieces.