5th Grade: Pop Art Prints

For this project, I showed a powerpoint on Pop Art and Andy Warhol's famous prints.  We defined what popular culture was in his day and what it is now.  Students brainstormed a pop culture object that would best represent them and drew it on a sheet of small paper 4 1/2" x 6". Then they placed a styrofoam printing plate under their pencil drawing and traced over it again so it would carve into the foam.  Once their drawing was transferred and carved deep enough, they cut it out and we began to print.  I had them pick 4 analagous color papers, and  ink colors that were somewhat complimentary to their paper colors.  I set up a bunch of printing stations and let the students walk around the room to each station.  At each printing station I mixed two colors of ink together with a brayer (Red/Magenta, Blue/Turquoise, Yellow/Orange, etc.) to get a two-tone effect.  I always stress team effort with the print making process (each person at a station is responsible for a particular job), and they are pretty good about realizing that everyone needs to pitch in to print successfully.  Students had a lot of fun with this one!

(styrofoam printing objects)