Mexican Sun Huichol Yarn Painting Art Lesson

My 1st grade students are studying Weather and I thought this would be a fun lesson to link to their Weather Unit.

The Huichol People of Mexico create wonderful art using wooden boards coated with a layer of beeswax.   They push yarn into the coating of wax to create their designs.

The Sun and the Moon are prevalent in their designs.

I am going to use linoleum tile with an adhesive coating on the back instead of the traditional materials.

I divided the one square foot of tile (purchased at a home goods store on clearance - .32 each)

into 4" sections.  It's a little bit of work, but scoring (with a utility knife) the lines using a t square several times will allow the tile to break along the scored line.

Keep the wax backing on and separate the squares.

When you are ready to begin the lesson peel the backing off the square of tile.

Using lengths of yarn begin pressing the yarn onto the tile.  If you want to move it that's

 fine a few times, but then it will start to lose it's adhesive.  Overall it's pretty forgiving and well worth the effort to avoid a gluey mess.

I'm going to ask the students to begin with a round shape which is easy to make by coiling the yarn around itself.

It's a good idea to use short lengths of yarn so you get a variety of colors.

Once you get the sun as big as you want you can start adding rays around it.

There are lots of ways to do this, here are a few I tried.

Now just keep adding more yarn and colors until you have your tile filled.

Every now and then push the yarn down firmly onto the tile.

I think this lesson will allow for intuitive artistic decisions and lots of individual creativity while we study Contrast, Texture, Warm and Cool colors, etc...

1st Grade Student Work: