3rd grade- Harlem Renaissance Jazz Collages!

Third grade focused on the Harlem Renaissance and the collages of Romare Bearden during February for Black a History Month. We learned first about Black History and focused on the Harlem Renaissance. We then looked at the collages of Romare Bearden and talked about how he was greatly influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. We looked at his collages of jazz bands and talked about how popular jazz was during the Harlem Renaissance.

After that I passed out a large sheet of drawing paper. I played jazz music for the class and had them make lines on their papers with crayon that went along with the music. Like their crayons were dancing to the music. I changed the music every two minutes and had them change their crayon color to get a good variety of lines. The next class we did a watercolor resist over the lines to create our backgrounds for the collage. 

Next, I handed out a handout with clip art images of jazz instruments. The students used the images to choose an instrument to draw. They drew each part of the instrument out on tissue paper and cut it out and made a collage on their backgrounds. They added detail with marker. This is one of my favorite projects so far.