Oh Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree....

I decided that my students were in dire need of a challenge. All that I've heard since December has started is "Santa, Santa, Santa," "I asked Santa for....," and "Oh no! Santa's stuck!" (We read that book last year....I didn't even pull it out for my display this year.)

Enter the Mosaic Christmas Tree Challenge.......  

I like to use scraps of paper from the scrap box in our workroom. There's no reason to ruin a perfectly good sheet of construction paper when we have plenty of little pieces that work well for mosaic art projects. I grabbed two shades of green, one shade of red, and one shade of yellow to hand to the students as they work towards their targets.

Step 2) Cutting down the scraps into even tinier scraps. It took about 30 minutes to get all of the pieces to size. At the end, I started ripping the pieces to save time. I like to keep my crafting materials semi-organized in little baggies. It reduces some of my Friday after school cleaning and I'm sure that the janitors appreciate my attempt at keeping the little tiny pieces off of the floor.

Step 3) Draw the tree. It's not the greatest, but it will be covered up pretty well by the end of the project.

Mine is on the left. I really didn't do a great job of earning tree pieces.

Step 4) Start the challenge. My students earned 1 piece of paper (they picked the color) for every correct production/answer/target. I earned the pieces that they lost. It may take a few sessions to complete, but I really love open-ended activities that allow them to express their artistic abilities. 

This is after my third group of the day. They are super competitive about everything. I think they let me earn like 5 pieces total. My tree probably won't get finished in time for Christmas.

P.S. Here is my inspiration for the project. (There's some really cool versions made out of vintage jewelry too.)  I also discovered that an OT blogged about a similar idea that adds little ornaments to the tree after I started looking up all the different kinds of Christmas tree mosaics. I don't follow any OT blogs, but maybe I should start.