Monday, September 14, 2015

Bottle Cap Mural

The completed hot air balloon bottle cap mural.
(I'm finally posting a project that I did with my grade 6 students 2 years ago! I really have find a way to be more efficient at posting.) We had a school theme on Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, and I wanted to incorporate that theme into my annual grade 6 project. I decided that a bottle cap mural would be interesting, and so the collection of bottle caps began.

I introduced the project to the students in January, and asked the entire school community to help contribute to the collection of plastic bottle caps. I placed 3 boxes outside of my room so that people (parents, staff, and students) could easily deposit their caps. I initially collected them with 2 or 3 colours per box. 

This is how I initially collected and sorted the caps.
I had students further sort them by individual colour. Once the collection was complete, I took all of the caps home and washed them by hand in my bathtub! Each night I had hundreds of bottle caps on my bathroom floor airing out on towels. My family was very understanding!!!

Two different designs were created based on the colours of caps that were collected. I decided that I was going to attach the caps to a 4x8 sheet of Plywood, so I taped out that area on my basement floor. My daughter (thank goodness for her help) and I then mapped out the different designs with the caps on the floor.  I presented these designs to the students who then voted for their preference.

With the design chosen, I prepared the Plywood by painting it white. (I had the hardware store cut the sheet into 2x4 sheets to make it more manageable). Then, I traced out the design onto each piece before transporting it to school. It was now ready to be worked on by the students.

I scheduled a time with each of the graduates to take turns in painting the design. Once that was complete and dry, it was time to begin placing the bottle caps on it.

The painting process begins!

These students are painting the finer details.

Two of the boards are painted and ready for the caps.
Again, each of the students took turns placing the correct colour of cap on the board and either screwed or stapled it on. The more rigid caps required a screw as they either shattered when stapled or would not allow a staple to penetrate it. My husband (I owe him thanks too!) used a drill press to drill a hole in all of the caps that required a screw. 

The caps for the rays of the sun were all screwed on.
I purchased a pneumatic nail gun that accepts staples because a regular staple gun wasn't strong enough. The students loved using the nail gun and didn't resist when I insisted that they wear protective goggles!

Every student was very eager to use the nail gun! It also made the work so much easier.

I overlapped the caps on the cracks to hide the fact that I cut
 the board into 4 pieces. It's starting to come together nicely!
Over 2,300 caps were collected to complete this project. The graduates were very excited with their work and were proud to leave their mark at the elementary school that they attended. We now have a daily reminder of them and an attractive piece of art decorating our halls!

I placed two plaques at the bottom, one to describe the project
and the second lists all of the graduates that worked on it. 

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