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Special Someone Monument

Personal Sculptures

Students will create a meaningful personalized sculpture for an important person in their life.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Giving someone a personalized and handcrafted gift is a great way to show appreciation and express gratitude. Making something that is thoughtfully tailored to the recipient can deepen the bonds between the creator and the recipient. It serves to validate the appreciation the giver feels, and it can evoke a deep emotional response from the recipient.

  • Step 2

    Have students identify someone special and important in their lives. Then ask them to create a personalized piece of art for them out of Model Magic. They could also create a handwritten note to accompany the sculpture.

  • Step 3

    Have students present their personalized sculptures to the class and discuss the person it's intended for and why that person is special to them. Then have them bring the artwork home and give it to the person it was created for.

Standards

LA: Read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grade level text complexity band independently and proficiently.

VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

LA: Know and use various text features (e.g., headings, tables of contents, glossaries, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts orinformation in a text.

LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Identify and use various sources for reconstructing the past, such as documents, letters, diaries, maps, textbooks, photos, and others.

SS: Compare and contrast different stories or accounts about past events, people, places, or situations, identifying how they contribute to our understanding of the past.

SS: Use appropriate resources, data sources, and geographic tools to generate, manipulate, and interpret information.

VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.

Adaptations

Possible classroom resources include: 13 Buildings Children Should Know by Annette Roeder; If Stones Could Speak: Unlocking the Secrets of Stonehenge by Marc Aronson; The Story of the Statue of Liberty by Betsy Maestro; The Washington Monument by Kristin L. Nelson; The Lincoln Memorial by Kristin L. Nelson; O, Say Can You See? America's Symbols, Landmarks, And Important Words by Sheila Keenan; Mount Rushmore by Andrew Santella

Organize a class trip to a local or national monument. If possible, ask a tour guide to assist with sharing details about the monument. Prior to the trip, students write questions that they will focus on during the trip. Afterwards, students post learning to a class blog.

As a class, students identify domestic and international monuments that they are interested in investigating. Students collaborate to write research questions to focus on during their investigations. Each student selects a single monument to research. Organize the research into a single PowerPoint slide and compile all slides into a complete PowerPoint presentation to share with students.

Students use their research on monuments to compose a poem about their self-selected monument. Post these with a student sketch of the monument and its surrounding area.