Amate Bark Paintings

First graders have been studying a social studies unit called "Places in Our World" over the past month, specifically focusing on the country of Mexico! We have learned about Mexico's map, geography, weather, and a bit about their music, food, art, and holidays. I have a connection with a first grade class in Monterrey, Mexico, and our two classes have been sending each other emails and photos as well as an iMovie introducing ourselves. Next week we hope to Skype with them so that we can ask each other questions and talk "in person!" 

This week we learned about several groups of native people who used to live in Mexico (such as the Maya and Aztecs) and made an art project originating with a group of native Mexicans called the Otomi. The Otomi make handmade, textured paper from the bark of Amate trees and then paint it with things like the sun, flowers, birds, animals, and other things found in everyday life using brilliant, sometimes fluorescent paints (which makes a beautiful contrast with the dark, handmade paper). 

We tried making our own version of Amate bark paintings, roughing up the edges of brown paper to look like Amate paper, then drawing birds, plants, animals, suns, etc with pencil on it. We then painted the drawings with fluorescent paint and finally outlined them with black marker to make them stand out. These will hang on the bulletin board outside our classroom and we will send home our last project (our spring symmetry paintings from last month)! Below are some photos taken during the process.

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