Our favorite Art project so far, has been the String Art for the "Miracles of Jesus, Jesus feeding the 5000.
You've probably seen this project before. You pound nails into a piece of wood in the shape of whatever you want to remember (in this case, fish), then weave different colors of yarn from nail to nail.
"Hammering in the story" so to speak
We first had the kids trace their drawing on a piece of tissue paper, then taped the paper to the piece of wood to act as a template for "where to nail."
We used a variegated color yarn. (2 choices-green/brown or blue/green) they tied the yarn to one nail and wove the yarn around the outside pattern of the fish, then zig-zagged to their hearts content around the nails. up, down, sideways...whatever.
When they had covered the board adequately with yarn, they tied off on one of the nails.
They loved driving the nails and creating their unique art piece. Even though they were all similar, by giving them options in yarn color they still had unique string art. You could also allow them to use both yarn colors...one for the outline weaving and fish fins and another color for the body of the fish.
The kids looked at what they created and were clearly surprised at how cool it looked and that they did it all by themselves, and want to do string art again soon.
I'm thinking Joseph's coat of many colors would be really cool using several colors of string or yarn. It was pretty loud with all the hammering, but they were only driving the nails about 1/3 of the way down, it really didn't take long and the kids loved it. No injuries either! we used small hammers, small nails and small taps. Easy even for the 1st graders.
Note: Marie's idea was used by another member! Lesson plan here with more photos. It was originally written for younger children but could be adapted.