Students aged 5-8 in the Lower Elementary level embarked on a journey of printmaking, which served as a transitional activity linking their study of space to their forthcoming project of creating a book. They initiated this exploration by working in pairs to print glow-in-the-dark constellations, with each pair sharing a single squeegee. This collaborative effort soon expanded into individual endeavors as they delved into the intricacies of ink color mixing and learned to independently handle both small and large squeegees.
The focus was on fostering independence through the mastery of spreading ink and utilizing squeegees, thereby allowing students to take more control over the screen printing process. To enrich this learning experience, I enlisted the help of a high school student who specialized in screen printing. She joined us as a teaching assistant for the day, offering her expertise and guidance to the younger students as part of her Resident Expert focus.
The finalized book was screenprinted by a small group of students that wanted to continue with screenprinting. Students would come in several times a week and screenprint their book page designs. They wrote the story as a group and designed drawings for each page. After they created their drawings, it was shifted to a format suited for screenprinting and the screens were prepped. The final step for the pages was for students to hand color each character on every page after screenprinting a blank white shape to hold the place of the character. The book was donated to a traveling educator that wanted to help teach children about planets and space.