Earth Day Peacock Collages

my experiment

I recently had the opportunity to lead two Girl Scout troops and a Daisy troop in an Earth Day inspired art project. Oh what fun! It takes me back to my days in troop 178 in Pasadena, California. "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold." A good rule to live by.

My sweet group of 1st grade Daisies created owl collages using grocery bags and magazine pages along with oil pastels for extra details. Each girl got up and shared more about their owl after our creations were complete. When I asked the group about the 3 "R's" (reduce, reuse, recycle) for helping our environment, I was informed there is a 4th, "rot" (as in composting). Schooled by a 6 year old. 😉

my experiment

My two groups of 3rd-5th graders created peacock collages using the same recycled materials. Chalk pastels were used to add color to our grocery bag peacock bodies as well as the black construction paper backgrounds. There was a distinct haze of chalk dust in the air. I encouraged the girls to find just 3 magazine pages with interesting colors, patterns or textures and cut out small medium and large raindrop or oval shapes to create our feather eyes. Of course, there were too many beautiful pages to pass up, so they bartered and shared. This was a fun project and I was thrilled to see the girls go in their own direction in creating their collages.