Paper Pirate Ships

These pirate ships were created by one of my grade 3 classes. Students used plastic scrapers and wooden skewers to scratch patterns into wet painted paper. The aim was to create a wood grain texture in the brown and something to suggest the ocean on the blue papers. Once dry, we used the brown paper to fold an origami boat base. A piece of wooden skewer was added for the mast and paper sails and flags were cut from a template I made (students decorated them with Jolly Rogers etc).

We used one piece of blue patterned paper to cover a piece of cardboard for the base. Students then had to sculpt the rest of the blue paper into waves. I just love the way they have cut, twisted and curled the paper to suggest the movement of the ocean.

I must apologize for the quality of some of my photos recently. My camera seems to be on the way out - I'd better start saving some pennies for a new one!

Colonial Ships

Inspiration: These ships were inspired by the work of New York artist Ann Wood whose ships I love! I tweaked one of her ship templates to make it a little more 'kid friendly'.

These were made by grade 6 and 7 students to look a little like the First Fleet of European ships to colonize Australia. They took many weeks of paper mache-ing (?) and construction and they still don't look as good as I would like - but there's only so far you can take things sometimes!

Ancient Roman Style Paper Mosaics

Inspiration: Black and white ship mosaics from Ancient Rome.

These grade 7s were studying the ancient world as well as learning Italian so it seemed like a great opportunity to look at Roman mosaics.
After showing the students photographs showing different examples of boat mosaics they designed their own by cutting paper into small pieces and creating a mosaic on black card. Finishing touches were drawn on with liquid paper pens.
Limiting the colour scheme to black and white created a striking display of boats.