Matryoshka Dolls (Russian Dolls)

Each month, I create a different theme for my lessons and I plan projects that are related to that theme. A couple of months ago, the theme was art from around the world and I ordered a box full of matryoshka dolls (Russian dolls). When we were supposed to work on those dolls we had new projects needed for their music class and I had to postpone the lesson until this month. 

We looked at different pictures of matryoshka dolls and discussed what elements they all shared. We noticed that all the dolls had circles for cheeks, a scarf around their head and a flower decoration. We looked at a video of women painting matryoshka dolls and discussed the different kinds of dolls we saw in the video. 

When students started drawing their dolls they had to include the 4 elements we noticed all the dolls had: cheeks, flower on the body, scarf on the head, and a happy woman.

If I work on this project again, I would have students paint the bottom layer color of the scarf and on the body. I would have students draw their flowers and patterns once the paint has dried. I think changing the steps would speed up the process because this project took us over a month to finish. 

Here is a recording of one of the classes that worked on the dolls:

This is the lesson plan I created for this lesson.