Maybe Something Beautiful
Our 3rd grade students learn about the history of their town and take walking field trips every spring to local historical sites. This year I chose several books and activities that would focus our thinking on community art, ultimately leading them to a classroom project where they create a symbol for the town based on what they learned. We began with the book Maybe Something Beautiful written by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell and illustrated by Rafael Lopez . Part 1 - Laying the foundation (reading the book) After reading I asked students why people create community art. Overwhelmingly students decided it was to make the community more beautiful and to make people happy, but students had questions. Was this considered graffiti? What was the difference between art and graffiti? We ultimately decided that if someone had permission from an official source, it was not considered graffiti. Part 2 - Digging deeper (meeting the illustrator) Next we took a deeper di