Traveling Mural Project....Join Us For This Global Art Project, Friends!

As we get ready at Van Meter Community School in Iowa to celebrate Read for the Record on October 25 with the beautiful story Maybe Something Beautiful, we wanted to start something special with others around the world by creating a traveling community mural project.

With the Traveling Mural Project, we will be connecting with other school communities around the world to create murals of peace, friendship, diversity and love. The theme and design of the mural your community create is up to you! That is what will make this project so unique and personal.

Here are the easy steps to get involved and be part of the traveling mural project too.

1. Sign up at bit.ly/travelingmuralproject where you will connect with a group of 10 other schools, libraries and classrooms.

2. Create a 10 foot mural with your school community on butcher paper.  You can use paints, crayons, markers, pencil, etc.. You can use any color of butcher paper you would like.

It can be as simple as putting up a 10 foot piece of butcher paper (36 inches wide) and having your students contribute to it over the course of the month to having it all drawn out for them to color in too. Anything goes with this mural project....make it personal to your community and students.

3. When the mural is finished, TAKE A PICTURE, cut the mural into 10, 1 foot long pieces and send them to the 9 other places on your list.  Make sure to include the name and location of your school somewhere on the mural. Keep one of the pieces for your mural. Send the mural pieces by November 30, 2018.

4. Once you have all 10 pieces of the mural, put it together with your students to create your traveling community mural.

5. Make connections throughout this project with the others in your group. This project is about creating global connections and community with others around the world.  We can use Skype, Google Hangout, Kidblog and other forms of communication.

My cousin and teacher librarian, Julia Maynard, created this awesome Google Map of all of the schools participating in the Traveling Mural Project. She will continue to add the participating schools and at the end will add pictures of each mural from the schools around the world.

6. Post pictures & videos using #travelingmural on Twitter and Instagram. Let's all post these by the end of 2018.

Here is a Google Slide presentation that our related arts team is using to kick off this project at Van Meter.  You are welcome to use it or make a copy and add your own slides too.

There are lots of wonderful picture and nonfiction books to use when talking about and creating murals.  This is a Padlet with several….please feel free to add more too.

Thank you for being part of the Traveling Mural Project with our students and community.  We hope to connect with all of you as we create our murals and celebrate community with others around the world.  

Again, you can sign up here.