Digital differentiation using iPads

I've done mandalas with kids for ages, and this year with my emphasis on choice they had total freedom in media and design.  Some of my Grade 4's chose to create large and loose compositions with with big swaths of paint while others chose to be very detailed oriented with colored pencils and lots of shading.

As a result, some children were finished literally weeks before their peers.  I gave the early finishers a challenge: digitally add your mandala into an image in a way that it looks like it belongs there.  This is a classic low entry point high ceiling activity in that a child could just plop a mandala onto any background or use the various tools within the app (or even jump between apps) to create their desired effect.

This was right around the time of the US election so there was a lot of Trump related art, which I did not object to as long as there wasn't any violence involved in the image.  It actually started some good conversations about how things that are on our minds tend to bubble up to the surface when we are free to choose what to create in art, whether we are conscious of it or not.  The beauty of self expression!

Here are some of the completed collages:







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