Wall decorations - Part 2

The students are all back to school, now, and the school year is officially in full swing. Things here have started getting back to their usual fast pace and hectic schedule. I had a request to work on some horses for another teacher's room, and finished them just in time for the students to return to school on Monday. Actually, I finished them on Thursday as I was running out the door trying to get my middle schooler, and my high schooler off to their own schools for Open Houses (both, at the same time).

The technique I described in my last blog was easy enough to follow that my friend ended up tracing some of the spots on the palomino I was making for her, and helping to finish the horse. I think after watching me trace two horses out for her this year from clip art I found in Appleworks, she will be able to work on her own bulletin board and wall decorations next year.

I managed to snap a few photos of the cows and pigs I wrote about in my last blog. Unfortunately, it was late in the day and the hallway lights had already been dimmed for the day. But, I think these will show enough detail to get the idea across.



The cows are about 4 to 5 feet in length and take up the majority of the wall in the hallway. Their hooves are starting to curl up from where I colored them black with a marker, instead of using black construction paper or bulletin board paper. This was a lesson learned. When I made the horses, I used scrap pieces of black butcher paper, tracing, cutting, and gluing in place.


The cows and the pigs are separated by a fire door but are on the same wall in the hallway outside the room. One of the aides in the room collects pigs, porcelain pigs, that is, so the idea of the pigs was for her. I found a clip art online of a cute cowboy riding the pig, which lends itself to the Wild West theme we have for our school this year.

Another hint I learned in the process of doing them was to disable to screen saver and sleep mode on the laptops. It can be quite frustrating as the screen suddenly goes black and then have the screen saver dance around on the board as you are trying to trace your animal.

I hope this helps to inspire some that feel they cannot draw or lack creativity. I did both of these wall decorations in a couple of afternoons. The horses were a little smaller and took me just a couple of hours. This also has other applications that can be useful in the classroom with the students, such as character studies in Language arts, and tracing maps of states and countries for social studies. The only limit to creativity with this is your resourcefulness in doing searches for clip art, drawings, and photographs.