Ideas for an art project, key stage 2 - map related - thinking caps required!

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I have to state from the off that I am the teacher; problem is I am not remotely arty and we have a big focus on art in school this year.

Art has to take the form of a build up, project style over the course of the half term.

Any ideas how I can link an art project to maps and countries?

Was thinking maybe sketching landscapes, yawn! Really want something the children will enjoy

My ideal would be making a 3d structure - a model of the Eifell Tower for example, but I havent a clue how you would go about it!!

Is this a group project or individual?
Could you make a massive 3D world map out of papier mache - just put bumps to make land in the approximate shapes of continents and then paint blue/green to show sea/land.
Then either as individuals/groups make a land mark for each country e.g. Eiffel Tour made of straws, or pyramids made of clay etc.

What about a modelling project? Divide class into groups and each group make a model of an iconic building from each continent e.g. Sydney Opera House, Pyramids, Leaning Tower of Pisa. Use junk like cardboard boxes, kitchen rolls and egg boxes for a base and then cover with newspaper paper mâché before painting.

Paper plate art of food from different countries in 3d.

Collage of famous people from various countries.

Use an outline map of the country as a template and use mosaic to make the flag of the country.

Pirate map/treasure map using local landmarks?

There's a QCA module for year 4 called journeys. I used this to make abstract pictures.

In each group of 4, the first child drew their route from their house to school, thinking about each turn, roundabouts, important buildings etc. They drew it as one continuous line, but didn't add detail. They then passed their work onto the next child, and received a new one. This time, they drew (in a different coloured pen) their journey to another place. We repeated this so that each paper had 4 different journeys shown in 4 different colours.

After the journeys had been drawn, the child got their own work back, and had to design patterns, shapes and colours to fill the interlocking areas created by the different journeys.

We ended up with some really interesting, really abstract works of art that the children absolutely loved!

I've used similar to Juniper with younger children. Can also tie in the use of a Roamer (if your school has them) also once they have their own line drawing of a map with their own route to school, you have the basis for them giving these lines various arty treatments...how about aboriginal dots and outlines? Or looking at how artists use colours to express feelings, and have them use their own colour-feeling to fill in their map, or look at how artists treat maps (do a Google search for maps, illustration for ideas). The maps can be filled with words to male a picture poem. Then, they could start again, building and elaborating a story line, transforming their school-home journey into something fantastic, an adventure story, or time travel into the past and then the future. (I was on my way home from school, and I saw a...which was...and you will never guess...but then...suddenly...)
You can look at scale and measurement, bearings, distance and time and speed.

Which end of ks2? For upper, how about group work where you get them researching different statistics about the world/Europe/UK and then they design maps which represent those statistics like the map of the world redrawn by size of populations rather than land mass. Would tie into maths and geog as well?

DS (yr3) has just done a science project on the Eiffel tower and they had to design a picture of it being constructed with marshmallows and spaghetti and then once the design was done actually construct it.

They had great fun!!

OK you need some corragated card board, papier mache and a map (OS).

Get a map with a few hills on it and photocopy to a large size. Put the map on the cardboard and use the contour lines to cut out pieces of card.

Stack them on top of each other so you have 3D hills based on 2D data - then cover with the papiermache and paint. It might be interesting to do your local area.

Idea 2

This depends on how multicultural your school is.

Get a blank map of the world, ask the children to bring n pictures of family who either live abroad or grandparents who are immigrants etc etc then you can sccan and put a copy of the people on the map with each country.

Idea 3

Again large blank map of the world, in groups, each group gets a country and has to research and draw things about that coountry so India - tigers, sari, curry. Austalia koalsa, boomerang etc.

Then pu the whole thing on a wall display. You can do this over a few weeks beause there are so many countries each group will have several to do.

Thank you so much for these ideas, they are brilliant! TES has nothing on Mumsnet!!

Really appreciate your help.

Not a teacher, but all of mine love art, dd1(yr3) loves Monet and dd2 (yr1). They decided after our visit to Paris to do paintings of the Eiffel Tower, dd1 naturally did hers in an impressionist style, dd2, well let's say it was abstract, clearly the Eiffel Tower, but 'set in the future'. Maybe you could get them in groups and ask them to look at different artists and paint famous sights in that style.

Will steal the idea about a relief map!

Have a look on Pinterest but beware its a timeeater!

I'm not a teacher but I'm loving the idea about making a 3D sculpture based on the 2D OS map. Might do that with my 2 over half term

Aboriginal dot art (cotton buds dipped in paint, done on brown paper) looks good and is easy.

Flags and the reasons for their colours and design. There are pacific ones that link to sea, sky and black volcanic sand, rising sun for Japan, multicultural all colours S Africa etc.

Or you can do as DDs teacher did and timetable art for the day you don't work

Split children into groups, let them choose a country - each being different to the other groups.

Each group researches the country - flag, population, famous things in that country, foods, temperature, type of landscape (jungle, rocky, crops, pastural).

Then each group presents their findings, either in written report, powerpoint, project sheet etc.

Maybe the kids could also choose an activity from that country to do with the class - india could paint henna type hands decorations, america make pom poms and cheerleading, france a painting of eiffel tower...

One group could do their project and activity each week - not sure how that works logistically, but each week could have a country based theme.

3d map/ model or your local area.
If your rural- he village and surroundings , if your twon based use a different scale and do whole town with points of interest picked out in more detail or just do the school campus. Either way include in your terms work "my route to school" map making.