Our Mural Story

Our mural story began when one of our parents, who also is an artist, offered to do a mural for the school, but wanted to develop the content through a collaborative and cooperative method using all the students of the school. How perfectly Montessori!

She first assigned each student to draw a picture of the school showing what he or she liked about it. Then she formed groups of four or five students (mixed age and gender) and issued the next assignment: each group would draw one picture from the many, making sure to include at least one recognizable part from each student. The smaller groups, each with their own picture, then joined to form larger groups, with the task of combining pictures into one, still maintaining a specific part from each child’s original drawing.

Now with several pictures, new mixed groups were formed, for one more collaborative activity. One group handled the inside portion of the school, another the playground, another the ground, one for the sky, and one for space. From these efforts the final drawing was achieved. And once the mural was hung at the front of the building, each student could proudly point out a unique contribution to the whole.