Celebrating diversity and creativity
This is a fun art activity for parents to do with their children or for people who wish to create independently.
We people may look different from each other and at the same time we have much in common in that we are all human beings on planet earth. We each have unique characteristics and lessons to learn in this life. As spirit, I believe we are ultimately connected. How do you see yourself in others? We can let go of qualities we do not like and enhance what we enjoy. The choices we make within ourselves ripple into our world like a stone dropped into a pond. What do you want to create?
Make a chain of people and color it to represent the beauty of diversity, (how boring life would be if we were all the same) and recognize the unity of our similarities as well.
This basic idea works for 1st and 2nd grades (with supervision). Older ages can work at their chosen level to make this activity authentic. The links below offer inspiration and instructions for making a string of people or butterflies. Once you understand the basic concept you can make a string of anything you wish.
The Origami Resource Center link offers clear instructions for folding and cutting various topics including paper dolls. https://www.origami-resource-center.com/paper-dolls2.html
This link on how to make a string of butterflies is from the Internet Archive, which is a non profit digital library. Click on the picture to check out the informative Scholastic book, Butterflys. https://archive.org/stream/butterflies00gallrich#page/n33/mode/2up
Supplies: Paper, pencil, scissors, color pencils, markers, or crayons. Optional: glue stick, color paper, background paper. * I recycled the foil from a chocolate bar to make the shiny sun.
I drew a picture of my daughter from a photo album for this example. Choose a meaningful subject in which to express yourself.
The tricky part was cutting into the enclosed shape between the body and skateboard. To do this, I folded the paper a bit to get the cut 
started.
I chose white paper and color pencils because they worked best for coloring small shapes. Multi cultural skin colors can be found too.
