Persian & Moroccan Tiles Paper Art

 

Grades 3-6 Persian and Moroccan Tiles

Lesson Background:

As a part of my exploration of art from the mother countries of my EALD students, this week we "visited" Morocco and Iran.  We watched Youtube clips showing images and playing music from these countries and admired the amazing patterns and designs of the mosaic tiles used on buildings in these countries.

Lesson Materials:

glossy coloured brenex squares cut into quarters

scissors

glue

templates of tiles for ideas (I just did a Google image search)

gold paint

thin paintbrush

Lesson Steps:

1.  We looked at real life examples of the tiles and talked about common patterns and symmetry used in the tile designs.

2.  I showed the children how to make borders by folding a square in half, snipping the middle and cutting inside the square to make the desired shape.  I also showed them how to make multiples of a shape by cutting into a pile of little pieces of paper at the same time- this would help them achieve  symmetry in their designs.

3.  I handed out black and white templates of designs I found on Google Images and encouraged them to pick and choose shapes and designs they liked and meld them together to make their own unique design.

4.  The children cut out and stuck together their designs.

5.  When completed, the children used a small amount of gold paint and a thin brush to add some gold highlights to their tile.