Imaginative Insects

Fourth graders were intrigued by insects this year. I gave them the challenge of "inventing" their own with this printmaking project. I checked out many books on insects and we talked about different shapes we saw. They needed to figure out how to make the insects seem believable so no stick legs here! The girls thought about joints in legs, antennae shapes, body segments and eyes. Would the insects fly? Would they be good climbers? Would they have stingers to protect themselves?

We used foam printing plates to make the prints. First they drew their insects in their sketchbooks, them transferred them to the foam plates by tracing over their drawings over the foam. They were so excited to make their own colorful paper using color diffusion paper, liquid water colors and pipettes. After their papers had dried, we used silver ink to print the foam plates. What interesting and beautiful results they achieved!