Asalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu
Last week me and the kids were learning about China. As part of our curriculum, Expedition Earth, one of the suggested crafts was to build a model of The Great Wall of China. But I wasn’t able to find the same materials that Erica originally suggests in her post, so I put on my Art teacher thinking hat and we made our own version.
What you will need:
Large board – must be strong enough to hold the model
Several packs of airdrying clay
Paint and paintbrushes
Toothpicks
Cardboard
Glue
Tissue/sponge
Red and yellow coloured paper
This was a project I wanted my kids to remember so we opted for a large board so we could make our project big and bold. I then drew on some parallel lines, and cut some red craft paper and glued it on top to create our base. Erica used foam pieces as blocks, but since I couldn’t find these we used some air drying clay instead, and made each block by hand! The kids then used PVA glue to stick the blocks on, following the outline I had made.
After the first layer of blocks, we gave our wall some height by adding another two layers. We then made a fort at the end of the wall and let the whole thing dry overnight. The next morning, while eating some snacks and watching some documentaries we started painting!
Since The Great Wall of China is surrounded by greenery, we decided to paint the rest of the canvas green. I didn’t have any sponges to hand so instead we used tissue pieces to dab the paint on, parts of the tissue got stuck but I think this made it look more realistic and gave some texture.
The kids also mixed different shades of green too, so some parts were dark green and others were light. I’ll admit, the schoolroom was in chaos at this point, tissues everywhere, paint splodges on the floor, but it was fun!
For more detail, we cut out some stars so our pathway looked like the China flag, and also added some facts about the wall in the form of flags.
And here is our finished masterpiece.
