Dressing Up as Fossils!
By Paula Briggs
In this week’s session we widened our horizons and made our drawings on metre squares of fabric. I wanted the children to concentrate mark making, exploring the texture of fossils and rocks and to fill the whole canvas. Then a fun treat was in store for the children right at the end, when we wrapped our bodies in the canvases to turn ourselves into fossils!
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Sheila Ceccarelli
October 18, 2013 @ 11:52 am
What a brilliant idea! Dressing up as a fossil – what a totally immersive experience this must have been for the children involved. Love it!
Christine Pensa
January 31, 2014 @ 4:35 pm
Wow – I love the idea of them using their piece as living fossils! I bet that was the best part for some of them. Great project! Thanks for the inspiration!
Paula Briggs
February 3, 2014 @ 11:21 am
I kept the dressing up bit as a surprise and they certainly enjoyed it!
Grace Barritt
November 16, 2014 @ 8:04 pm
Hi, I love the idea of dressing up as a fossil at the end. I am thinking of trying this with my Year 3 class. Looking at the photographs, are the children just using pictures of fossil texture to base their work on?
Paula Briggs, AccessArt
November 16, 2014 @ 8:17 pm
They had drawn from real fossils in previous session, but yes for this session i just googled images of fossils and made sure the images i printed out filled the page (because I wanted their fabric drawings to fill the fabric). I kept the dressing up part a secret and at the end got them to all curl up on the floor. The change of pace was lovely as they all became very still rocks and then one by one they walked amongst ecah other!
Grace Barritt
December 6, 2014 @ 8:48 pm
Looking forward to trying the project, however I have a very limited budget. Have you any suggestions for where to source very cheap material, I have thought about using the heaviest gauge white garden fleece? Thank you
Paula Briggs, AccessArt
December 7, 2014 @ 8:13 pm
hello Grace many thanks for your comment. I’m not sure what the white gadren fleece will be like to draw on – might be interesting? Have you tried looking in charity shops for old white sheets? Or even asking for donations from parents?
best of luck! let us know how it goes
Paula
Grace Barritt
February 10, 2015 @ 8:33 pm
Hi, thanks for the advice. I bought some king sized sheets from the charity shop, washed them and cut into metre squares. The children thoroughly enjoyed the experience. For warm up we did continuous line drawings and then did some physical exercises moving our arms and shoulders to get ready to use our whole bodies. Some of the children made hand prints on their fabric – we had done cave painting a few weeks ago. As the finale we turned into fossils to music. I plays ‘Mars’ from the Planets by Gustav Holst. Thank you
Paula Briggs, AccessArt
February 10, 2015 @ 10:26 pm
Fantastic Grace I’m glad it went well!
Michelle G
April 6, 2022 @ 11:25 am
Our Year 1 children are going to give this a go next term. I can’t wait. Such a good idea. Can you think of an artist that I could also present to the children?