Mrs. Ryback's Art Studio: 1st Grade: All About The Benjamins! A study of money as a reflection of community.

1st Graders have been studying their connections to their communities this year. We have completed a few projects related to this theme, including a study of money, more specifically, the symbols on money, and how they reflect the place from which they come.

We started by talking about symbols in general, and thinking about the types of symbols we see everyday- on traffic signs, on public bathrooms, in math (just to name a few)- and we talked about how symbols can help us communicate even when we speak different languages. Symbols are images that represent larger things, places or ideas. They are recognizable to people all over the world.

Then we looked at symbols that represent the United States and Chicago, such as the Statue of Liberty, the flag, sport teams emblems (just to name a few). We then talked about money. Money contains many symbols that relate to the place it comes from. American money has pictures of past presidents, important buildings, like the White House, and other more complex symbols. American quarters are even more interesting as they represent each state they originated from. The Illinois quarter shows Abraham Lincoln, the Chicago skyline, a farm and the outline of Illinois, while Indiana's quarter has a Nascar race car on it! I shared my coin collection of coins from around the world so the students could investigate what other countries put on their money as well. They noticed that there were some common themes among the different countries: many put important leaders on their money, while others had plants, flowers, animals, and important buildings. Some even had decorative designs. All of the money included a number (value) and the name of the country or state it was from.

After all of this research and discussion, students set out to design a coin to represent Oak Terrace. We brainstormed a lot of possible symbols to chose from that relate to school and Oak Terrace, specifically. Some students chose to show the actual building, while others drew our leader, Mr. Kallieris! Our school mascot, the Monarch Butterfly, was a popular symbol, along with the Super 3.
I reminded students to be sure to include a value for their coin and either the name of the school or the name of the symbol they chose.

Once finished, students traced their design onto a piece of heavy duty colored aluminum using a process called "Repousse." Each coin was treated with shoe polish upon completion to give it an old, tarnished look.

The second part of our project asked students to design a bill. But instead of the money being from Oak Terrace, students were asked to imagine that they were the rulers of an imaginary land and design money for that land. We thought about the type of place we would want to rule and the symbols that could represent that place. Of course, they had to include the value and the name of the place in their design.

Making paper money required a few extra steps. Once the original drawing was done, students had to trace it onto a piece of transparent tracing paper. The tracing paper was then taped backwards to a piece of foam. The foam would later be used as a printing plate. When printing, all images are reversed, so we had to draw our words backwards into the foam to ensure that they would be facing the correct direction when printed.

Students chose a color paper and ink for their money, and using a brayer, rolled the ink onto their foam and stamped the foam onto the paper to print their bills. This process is very close to the way actual money is printed. We watched a short video of that process so the students could see how similar it really is. The only differences are that the US Mint uses steel print plates and prints LOTS of bills at one time.