Hanging Flower Pages: A Seasonally Correct Spinning Book

This past week I worked with second graders who have been learning about the flowers, stems, leaves and roots of plants.  In response to this we made a four-part book to relate to these  plants parts.  Each page, made from folded 11″ x 4 1/4″ paper, was created separately.  On the front is a drawing, on the back the students will write about the functions of each part of the plant.

These pagaes are glued to piece of yarn, which they sandwich, and are separated from each other with three beads.

Cascade of Hanging Flowers

From the bottom of the string hangs an origami pocket  “flower pot” .

When it is time to take this project home, the flower drawings collapse into the pot for easy storage.

The most satisfying part of this project, for me, was being able to talk to the students about using color in their drawings.  The teachers had some photos of flowers for the children to look at and I brought in some simply drawn and colors flowers for them to refer to .

Flower Drawings, colored with crayon

I talked to the students about how using  just one color in their flower and leaf drawings would result in images that look flat. I encouraged them, then, to use a bit of orange an yellow when drawing a pink flower, some green and yellow when drawing a blue flower, and some yellow and blue when drawing green leaves.  To my surprise and delight, they seemed to embrace this concept, and did some really lovely drawings.

Diego's Flower

After creating their images on white paper, students cut out their drawings , leaving a bit of a white border, and glued them to the pages.  We did a bit of cut paper embellishment to give the page a bit of more sparkle.

Thea's Flower and Flower Pot

This whole project was done in two seventy minute sessions.  We all agreed that it would have felt better to have three days together, but scheduling conflicts didn’t allow this option.   The classroom teachers will be left with the job of  getting the writing on to the backs of the pages.  When the books are all done they will hang from the ceiling, which will allow the pages of the books to spin. It’s a lovely sight, but a hard one to photograph.

Field of Flower Pages in a Second Grade Classroom