Paper Circles

Paper Circles (by a 7 year old)

We do seem to have had a run of Deep Space Sparkle lesson plans over the past few weeks. I will have to come up with some of my own!  This is another one from my ecourse Teaching Art 101.

After a few weeks of clay and painting I wanted an easier lesson that used different skills.  Cutting and pasting is a great task to practice as it further develops those important fine motor skills.  I told the children that cutting practice can actually help their painting and drawing in future lessons.

I was actually surprised at how many children struggled to cut out a neat circle or oval.  Giving your children sissors to play with can be a bit scary (we have all heard of or witnessed the lovely haircuts children can give to each other or themselves) yet it's a really important skill to master.  Not only does it develop fine motor skills it teaches them how to focus, concentrate and go slow, skills I'm trying to instill in them during the classes.

We only did this lesson with my Tuesday class as the Thursday class works a lot slower and was behind on a few things.

My teacher example

You will need:

• Lots of coloured paper
• White Paper
• Black paper for background
• Sissors
• Glue Sticks

How To:

• Ask the children to cut 5-6 large white circles
• Then ask them to cut slightly smaller circles of various colours to fit inside these circles.
• They keep cutting more and more circles and pasting these inside the larger circles.  
• Keep going until all large white circles are filled with colour

For older children they can cut out the circles free hand.  For the younger children (Prep) I told them they could use a pencil to draw some of the circles and then cut them out.  We had a competition going on how many circles can you fit inside the white one?  I think the record was 11.

The Results: