Lauren’s description of coffee filter flowers intrigued me. I’m a big fan of using art in Religion class. (I’m a big fan of all kinds of cross-curricular activities in Religion. Math in Religion class is particularly fun.) Anyway, I wanted to use the flower idea in Seventh Grade Religion. But how would I hook it in to the current material?
We have been discussing the end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. How could we possibly make flowers while discussing the destruction and enslavement of a nation? Enter Isaiah. Isaiah the prophet warned Israel about the coming devastation, but then in the second half of the book, he shares wonderful words of hope. Chapter 35 is particularly nice. These people were being carried off into slavery, never to see their homeland again and Isaiah says: “the wilderness will rejoice and blossom” and “They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.” He’s talking about heaven! And he’s not just talking to them; he’s talking to us too.
In class, we read and talked about Isaiah 35, then painted the coffee filters with food coloring and water. They dried overnight, then the next day we crinkled them. I glued them to some paper and hung it on the wall. Voila!
They are beautiful! Well done, seventh grade religion class! (Good job not getting them all crumpled.) Now it’s all spring-y in your classroom. 🙂
Was it your idea to use hearts as leaves? ‘Cause that’s a nice touch.
I wanted to add leaves, and the die cut machine seemed like a quick way to produce a bunch of them. When I saw the heart shape, I thought of Morning Glory leaves right away. But the coffee filter flowers don’t look like Morning Glories.
That is simply lovely! 🙂
I love artsy stuff as cross-curricular activities. In fact doing the cross-curricular activities was one of my favorite things about teaching 7th grade religion.
YAY Flowers!
LOVE LOVE LOVE them!! Your students are very
luckyblessed to have a teacher who has such good creative activities to combine with their lessons!How did they end up putting the color on the filters?
They used cheap watercolor brushes. It took a while. But they could be detailed, which was nice.
“cross-curricular” is secret seventh grade religion teacher code for “coloring”, right?
Haha! Yes! I LOVE coloring in Religion! Even when it’s math or social studies, we still color, because were doing charts or maps.
We don’t get to color things very often in computer classes. We do shade things in every so often.
Brilliant! Beyond that, it’s already been said and I’m outta words anyway. Any time you want to do something to decorate my back wall, you have my blessing, by the way.
Stealing the tag line from some old Guinness commercials:
“BRILLIANT!”
What a wonderfully visual reminder of the Easter hope we have in Christ Jesus.