A Beautiful Opps!

First graders learned about symmetry and that mistakes are happy accidents and opportunities in art!

Barney Saltzberg’s book Beautiful Opps is a wonderful story that reassures children that mistakes happen and give us a chance to use our art brains (creativity) and each one can be turned into something amazing! The pages of this book are interactive with rips, tears and spills that with a lift of a flap get turned into something beautiful.

We started out by folding a blank piece of paper, opening it up and putting a paint blob on one side. Then we refolded our papers to make a mistake! We discussed how mistakes happen and with a little imagination we can change them into something amazing. We made both sides of our paper look the same by adding other paint blobs. In the second class we colored and  cut out our paper to look like butterfly wings, then added the body and pipe cleaner antennae!

I think the results are pretty darn cute!