Colorful Caring Cummerbunds

How does caring feel? What does it look like? Wear your caring feelings on a colorful cummerbund or sash!

• 1.

  Talk about feelings of caring. Who and what do you care for? How do you show your feelings? View Kokoshka's Girl With Doll and Renoir's Woman With Cat or Madame Monet With Her Son. How do these artists show caring in their paintings? Talk about how the colors, expressions, and figures show caring.

• 2.

  Use Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils to outline a person on paper. What behaviors and attitudes make a person caring? Brainstorm ideas and write words on and around your person. Draw symbols that remind you of the idea of caring, such as hearts, doodles, and sketches of things and people you care about. Choose colors that you think are caring colors.

• 3.

  Plan a design for a cummerbund or sash on paper using ideas from your brainstorm. The colored pencils easily erase if you change your mind! With Crayola Scissors, cut a wide piece of cotton or 50/50 cotton/polyester fabric to fit around your waist.

• 4.

  Cover your art surface with paper. Wear a painting shirt. With Crayola Fabric Markers, create symbols of caring. Draw yourself and others caring for treasured objects, pets, and people. Write words. Fill your cummerbund with the colors of caring! Air-dry the fabric before wearing it.

Benefits

• Children discuss feelings and expressions of caring.
• Children view and discuss artistic expressions of caring.
• Children plan and create their own wearable representation of the action of caring.

Adaptations

• Wear your sashes on a "Courage to Care" day. Read books about courage, caring, and compassion, working together to define each concept. Write stories about heroes and heroines who champion these concepts in brave original tales or biographies.
• Teachers may wish to preview the works of Renoir and Kokoschka to select the most appropriate treatment of subjects for students.
• Provide students with special needs alternative means to communicate ideas as necessary. Computer applications or other assistive systems may enable students to produce designs that can be recreated on fabric by an assistant.
• Assessment: Ask children to explain the meaning behind their drawings. Note how accurately the symbols they chose represent caring feelings.