We interrupt this blog for: Trout!

Recently I worked with the whole first grade (4 classes) at my daughter's school to draw a mural of the lifecycle of a trout. I am very thankful to the teachers for asking me to do this!

We did it in four sections, one for each class. Groups of 4 to 5 kids worked on it at a time. I kept it folded so each class could only see their own section, so they wouldn't try too hard to make it look like someone else's section.

I drew the outlines of the mural, like a giant coloring book. The science teacher was kind enough to sketch out what went where, so I wouldn't get busted by the kids for getting it wrong.

Then, we colored it using big fat crayons.

Here's a closer look:

I left a lot of blank space so the kids could add fish, whales, plants, birds or other species. We also have lots and lots of suns.

I had each child sign his or her name, so they would see it up there when this got displayed.

I asked that each child color an area of the mural, rather than going all over the place, so that there would be space left for the kids whose turns were later.

Some kids picked one thing and colored it, some went all over the place and scribbled madly, some went around perfecting other work, and some just wanted to make stripes with each color of crayon regardless of what the picture looked like.

I did a fair amount of prompting like, "That label there needs some color. Can you make it look fabulous?" or, "We could use some more plants." I didn't want them to feel like they were "messing up" the drawing by coloring on it.

Inevitably, someone colors on someone else's work or gets in someone else's way. I dealt with this by gently moving the kids so they were all the way around the outside of the picture and making specific suggestions for what they could color to keep them focused.

These types of collaborative projects are great because when they are done, the kids can see that they helped make something really big and colorful. They also reveal all sorts of personality types while letting each one make a contribution.

The most interesting challenge here was to provide just enough coloring-book-like structure that the kids could really go to town, without getting frustrated and while adding the things that they were comfortable adding.