Mandalas are a circular geometric pattern. Many cultures create mandalas, such as Native Americans and Buddist monks. Students learned about some natural mandalas like snowflakes, starfish and flowers - the patterns are repeated around a center. This is called radial symmetry. We started with a 12 X 12 piece of construction paper. Then we dug through some painted paper scraps left over from a 2nd grade Eric Carle project (this paper is beautiful and perfect for this project - I'm so glad we can use it again.) Everyone started by drawing a circle on the back of the painted paper, then they cut it out and glued it to the middle of the construction paper. I don't like pencil lines to show on the final project, so we drew everything on the back. From then on, we made four of each shape that we added around the circle. We discussed many different geometric shapes. Some kids kept it simple with rectangles and squares, while some made hearts and stars. This is a great project for kids to work on drawing, cutting, glueing, planning, patterning, etc.
