Elementary Activities: Christmas Mosaics

By: Deborah Pace Rowley

In my elementary school class, we have been learning about Ancient Rome. The students read about Roman Mosaics and then we recreated this artistic style in our class.

It was fun to see how engaged my students were in this project over several days. When you can find something that engages an active elementary-age child for more than 10 minutes, you know you have a winner!

If you are looking for a way to engage your older children while you finish up some Christmas wrapping or holiday baking, this project is for you. Simply choose a pattern from the many free patterns that we have provided here. Print one out. I had my students trace the pattern onto a plain piece of paper with light pencil first to eliminate the dark black outline. Then you can start cutting colored construction paper to fit your design. All you need is a glue stick to fix the "tiles" in place. You can see from the examples that some students cut very small shapes to fill their mosaics. Other students used larger shaped tiles. Whatever size you choose, the end product is simply beautiful. I think they would make great Christmas cards. All you would need to do is color copy the mosaic and turn it into the front cover of your own unique greeting.

Christmas Mosaic Patterns