Native American Sand Art

This was a lesson that was taught to us by one of our classmates. At the beginning of the lesson different types of Native American art was described. Then we had a chance to try one of the methods which was called sand art. We took a piece of sand paper and colored a Native American design on the sand paper with crayons. We had to make sure that we pressed hard enough with the crayons so it would transfer onto the paper. When were were finished with the design we took our white piece of paper and our sand paper over to the iron. We put the two pieces of paper between some newspaper and then ironed it allowing the crayons to melt and transfer onto the white paper. They turned out really neat and were a lot of fun. We were able to use our creativity to create a pattern we liked. The one thing that was a little bit of a challenge was determining if the crayon had transfered yet. If you lift up the paper to check you must be very careful that the sandpaper and the white paper don't move because it's nearly impossible to get them in the exact same place. As an extension for this project I would have the students do some research on the Native American cultures and really get an understanding of what these different art forms were used for.