Our Animal Molas

The mola applique pieces came out beautifully by the entire class of 4th grade students. We layered the cut outs by building upwards instead of cutting through. They designed the animal on scrap manilla paper that was cut to 9" x 12". That way most of them were large enough to be the main motif, but small enough to have room in the background for the floating repeated shapes. I am very pleased with the results.

Our school enjoyed having them hang in the cafeteria. They are now stored away as we will have a special expo at the shopping mall at the end of January and some will be shown again at the Pump House art gallery when Aquinas Schools has their elementary show.

The stacked colors really look marvelous in all of the student work. I think either the rectangle or the oval worked well for background fills. I prefer the oval, but it is a bit more work to make all these shapes. The students were aware of stacking the paper to cut more than one layer at a time.

I am glad we tried these pieces this year. It really helped enhance our studies of world art and they were enjoyed by many people the day we had our United Nations Celebration. This is a lesson I would definitely repeat.