A hatching chick picture

      Students will need crayons or magic markers to color their eggs and chick for this picture project. They will also need scissors, white school glue, a print of the Easter chick template below and one sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 inch construction paper for their background.

This project also calls for the use of brass, paper fasteners.

      Some students may insist upon the construction paper being green or light blue because their thinking in art is more concrete or literal than their peers. Or, it may be that all of your students will choose these two colors depending upon their perspective. Do not insist, however, that students use green for grass or blue for the sky, if they choose not to. Children differ greatly when it comes to the interpretation of "how" art should look. Some students are more abstract in their thinking than others and there is certainly nothing wrong with this.

      The idea of  "Easter grass" is also loosely interpreted by manufacturers of the product. All types of Easter grass, be it plastic or shredded paper, is sold in the market place, in every color imaginable and you may wish to supply this for added dimension in your picture; in the pictured example, mine  is drawn.

      Eggs are also painted with an endless variety of colors, designs, and pictures. Some of your public school children may even include religious imagery on their eggs.

      Do not dictate or prescribe their choices. Remember that freedom of speech is only limited for teachers in public schools because they are paid by so many people, from all walks of life, who have many different beliefs. These limitations attributed to teachers are not the same, however, for the children that they teach. Therefore, it is neurotic to overreact to a student's choices concerning how they desire to represent the Easter holidays. If some of your school children include religious imagery for this project, you needn't make such a fuss. They have a right to their cultural ethnicity, opinions and creative endeavors. If you expect differences, then you will not need to overreact to unusual choices. I have left the eggs blank so that the children constructing and coloring the project may choose to decorate their own eggs as they wish.
      The black dot on the template is where you will need to poke a hole and insert a brass, paper fastener. Make sure that, when your students are ready to paste their eggs to the background sheet of paper, they do not paste above the small black line noted on the template. The upper part of the egg needs to be left unpasted in order to accommodate for the spinning chick!

       Students will need to print the above template out, cut and transfer the design onto heavy cardboard. By these means, students will learn about the making of templates and how basic patterns are designed. Teachers may choose to group students at tables so that one set of templates may be made and shared between three or four students. I never hesitate to add this step into an art project because students learn so much information about "how" to process through the designing of things. However, I would eliminate the step altogether under some conditions.  

Easter hatching chic template.

Teacher's sample of the hatching chic Easter egg craft.

       In this teacher's sample I should note that the egg design on the right is original to it's former publication. Easter egg crafts from 100 years ago are far more elaborate graphically speaking than they appear today. This is the result, I believe, of artists immediate association/familiarity with Ukrainian immigrants at that time. Today, most folks immigrating from that area of the world to the United States are Muslim. Wouldn't it be interesting to do research on graphic history with your kids? Perhaps that should be my next big art history lesson?