Teaching Young Children the Art of Mosaics

I have been in one of our local schools for two weeks teaching the entire school how to create mosaics. These students are from Kindergarten to 5th graders. They were so much fun!

This was my first attempt at teaching elementary kids. I have taught middle school students and knew what to expect but the elementary students were so different. I took in 4" ceramic tiles as the base and the Art Tile Minis for the tesserae. We used Weldbond for the glue.

I went in with the plan to show them examples of a mosaic and discuss what makes something a mosaic. I was then going to talk to them about the history of mosaic art and finally show them how math is so closely related. I did this with the first class and quickly ran out of time. I never realized that the 4th graders would take so long to glue on all of their tiles. Instead of the planned hour, it took 1 1/2 hours and that is with all of the adults pushing these kids along.

I learned to leave out all talk of history and math and just focus on how to make the mosaic. The students all had a design drawn beforehand onto a grid paper. The paper had 10 squares going across and down and the kids were supposed to replicate the design using the tiny tiles. This worked pretty well after they got the first row and column set up. They didn't understand the concept of grout joints either but didn't get too frustrated when I made them move their tiles to give that little space.

I had one fifth grade class come in to grout and that was a huge mistake. They were a little rough and kept popping off the tiles. It was a nightmare. So I am going in every morning this week to work on the grouting. The projects are turning out beautiful and should be ready by Mother's Day!