2nd Grade: Aztec Suns

First students learned about the cultural significance of the sun patterns in Aztec (and other central American) cultures. They also learned about radial symmetry. We designed our suns the first day, just using pencil on paper that was the same size as the foil (5''x5''). (My completed example pictured above. 

 On day two we pressed our designs into the foil (I pre-taped their drawing onto the foil), going over it once on paper (using colored pencils so they could see the parts they'd done already) and a second time to deepen the design into the foil. 

 On day three we colored in our suns with sharpie, keeping the idea of radial symmetry and making sure they didn't color over the lines they had pressed out. 

On day four we created a mosaic border with cut paper. I had pre-taped the foil to the black paper (6.5 x 6.5) and cut the 1 inch squares. I told them they should keep their squares in some sort of pattern and that they should lay them out to measure how many they would need first. 

I really liked the way they turned out!