How to Make Art Projects Based on Crosses

Whether at Sunday School or home, you can find a number of ways to make and design colorful crosses, as you talk about Christian concepts together with children. Construction paper is a start, but more elaborate materials can produce more elaborate crosses, even magnets and crosses that can be hung on the wall.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Different types of crosses to trace (Roman, Celtic)
• Colored pencils
• Different-colored tissue paper
• Different-colored construction paper
• Different-colored sheets of foam
• Cardboard
• Foil
• Wood or sticks
• Acrylic paints
• Glue
• Markers
• Scissors
• Leather cord (optional)
• Magnet tape (optional)
• Hole punch and string (optional)

How to Make Art Projects Based on Crosses

1. Help pre-school and elementary grade students trace around different types of crosses with a colored pencil. These can be labeled and colored in, if desired. Discuss the differences. The Celtic cross, for example, features a circle around the cross.

2. Let young ones tear tissue paper into tiny pieces and glue onto a clear outline of a cross until it is filled in with color. Stripes or patterns can also work.

3. Cut construction paper or foam into blocks or squares, which children can glue onto a clearly outlined cross to make a kind of "patchwork" cross.

4. Show kids how to cut cardboard into two rectangles, one shorter and one longer. Wrap these neatly in foil and glue together to form a cross. Now color the foil with markers for a stained glass effect.

5. Sand down two mini-planks (scrap wood)--one longer, one shorter--and glue together for a wooden project. When the cross is dry, let kids paint it if desired. Branches glued or bound together with leather cord can create a more natural look.

Tips & Warnings

• Attach a few bits of magnet tape to the backs of any of these crosses (except perhaps the one made of branches) for a magnet.
• Hole punch the construction paper, foam or cardboard foil cross once or twice at the top end, loop a piece of yarn through the holes and knot it. Now it can be hung on a wall.