Stained Glass Windows

The Art of Stained Glass...kind of

I started talking with my fourth graders about the characteristics of stained glass.  They were able to make a pretty extensive list describing what it tends to look like and how they would describe it to someone who has never seen stained glass windows.  I teach at a Catholic school, so we also talked about the religious elements that can be used in stained glass and what kinds of subject matter we see portrayed.

I shared a PowerPoint with my students of various examples and the students pointed out all of the things they saw on our list we had made while we went through it.  Once we had a grasp on what it was and all that it entailed, the students brainstormed and idea for their own stained glass artwork.  They sketched out their plans (if you have a class set of dry erase boards, I recommend using those b/c the kids LOVE them--otherwise have them sketch it on some scratch paper).  I encouraged them to break up their backgrounds into smaller pieces, just like stained glass.

We transferred our design onto black construction paper in pencil.  Then we traced over our pencil with glue.  We talked about how the glue will dry clear over the black paper and leave that solder look to our stained glass.  We let the glue dry and used chalk pastels to color them in.  The chalk wipes right off of the glue, so it leaves those areas black.  They look stunning!