When I moved into my classroom, the previous teacher had boxes of random crafting supplies, and one box had TONS of green Easter grass in it! I really didn't want to throw out a lot of the stuff that was there, but I knew I would probably have a hard time figuring out what to use some of it for...and then it hit me! Green Easter grass is like green lettuce! And voila...Claes Oldenburg pop art hamburgers were born!
These took the students two class periods to do. We used construction paper, foam, pipe cleaners, tissue paper and the Easter grass. Crumpled brown tissue paper became the patties, and then all of the other materials were cut and manipulated into the other toppings on a burger (cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, ketchup, mustard, mayo, onions, etc.).
Since the burgers were so successful my first year, when Easter came and went last year, I decided the Easter grass wasn't a bad thing to have hanging around my classroom! This time, I stocked up on white and yellow grass and we made pop art pizza collages! I don't have the photos of us making these, but it was a 3 day project.
On the first day, as a class, we created a large pizza on butcher paper with markers and crayons. I asked students to brainstorm all of the different kinds of toppings pizzas could have and they took turns covering a large pizza crust with those toppings. I wrote each topping they came up with on the side and this was displayed in the hallway while we worked on the individual pizzas.
On the second day, students made their crust shape on Manila tag board, colored and cut it out. Then, we painted on the red sauce and started to glue on the Easter grass as cheese. On the third day, students added their toppings. They were required to do at least 3 toppings, not counting the cheese. They glued their pizza to their choice of colored tag board and then added other details, like a table cloth, silverware, etc.
The only caution with Easter grass is that it takes A LOT of glue to get the grass to stick! Has anyone else ever used Easter grass in an art project? What did you make with it and how did you glue the grass down?
