Our Hands Make Music!

I had a large purple wall front and centre in the Music room with nothing on it! My overhead projector screen was mounted on that wall, but now I have a Smartboard in a different location and the purple wall is bare! I tried posters and such, but didn't like that too much. On that wall, I wanted one decorative focal point in my classroom and something beautiful, meaningful and not too complicated for the students to make.

I decided to incorporate student artwork into a school start-up activity in order to create a removable mural!

Our theme for the artwork was "Ryerson Hands Make Music". Every student in the school ended up creating a hand outline with a phrase on it that began with "My hands..." along with their name. Students had to finish the phrase with their own idea such as "My hands play the drums" and decorate the hand cut-out.

For each class, we brainstormed different activities that we do in Music with our hands. I also let the older kids share ideas that didn't necessarily apply to our Music class, but that still applied to music like, "My hands play the piano."

I had the activity prepared differently depending on the grade level. The grade 4-6 students did everything on their own; tracing their own hand, writing their idea, decorating their hand, and cutting their art out. Grade 2 and 3 students were given a hand trace to write in and decorate, Kindergarten and grade 1 students got to choose from 5 different types of hand traces that I had already made, with a typed phrase inside of it. 

After every student had finished their hand art, I took two long pieces of blue bulletin board paper to make the base of our mural art. I typed up the letters for our art piece title and glued them in the middle of the bulletin board paper. Separating the hands by colour instead of grade, I glued them on, circling the title from the middle out. To make it look a little more polished and circular, I cut the blue paper edge close to the hands. Here is the finished product!

The kids love it and it adds to the welcoming and creative environment in the Music room!

- Steph