Heart Snail Collage

This is an adorable collage activity that I found on the website "Crafty Morning". 

Instead of construction paper (the type I order is a bit dull) we used colored photocopy paper: a combination of the 'brights' and 'pastels'. 

They used the light green to draw a slug type body and cut that out. Then they chose three sheets of paper to create the heart shell (we discuss choosing contrasting colours when choosing the colours they want). They folded a sheet of paper in half and drew the largest half a heart shape they could. I encouraged them to really try to reach all the edges, as this would be the largest heart. 

No matter how many times I teach my elementary kids how to make a symmetrical heart from a sheet of folded paper, there's always at least a couple of kids who really struggle with the concept. I demonstrate to them in person, show them the fold line, and the importance of starting the pencil line on the folded edge, not the open edge. They do practice hearts on scrap paper. But even so, when it comes down to making their good copy hearts, always a couple go through like three sheets of coloured paper until they get it right! Any tips for me?? I swear to God this is one of the hardest concepts for me to teach so that ALL my kids get it right! I think next time I'll also show them a video on my big screen TV and hopefully that will help. 

Anyway, once they cut out the largest heart shape, they use this as a template to create the rest of the hearts. They trace the large heart onto the next colour of paper, but then trace inside of it slightly, about 1 cm, to create a slightly smaller heart. Cut it out and this is the middle heart. Do it one more time to create the smallest heart. I challenge advanced students to create four (or more) hearts. Glue those together with a glue stick and then glue onto the slug body. Then they cut out eyes and the 'antennae' thing-a-ma-bobs (I actually Googled what they really are and they're not antennae as I kept referring to them to my kids: The tentacles that stick out from the head of a snail are not its “feelers” as most people believe. On the ends of those tentacles are the snail’s eyes.)

Anyway, whatever, haha! We added extra eyes on the head and then two small hearts from scrap paper on top of the tentacles. 

This project always surprise me how challenging creating the hearts can be for some students. I feel the project is too easy for my Grade 3's but a bit too challenging for alot of my Grade 2's. Nonetheless everyone managed to finish and it took about 2- 40 minute periods in total. 

I love how they all came out :)