Auction Art Project - Eighth Grade Peg People Resurrection and Nativity Tableau

I recently wrote about my cool resin and wood trays, that I made with second and third grade, making a bowl from magazine's and newspapers with third and fourth grade, making a perpetual calendar with sixth grade, making a velvet pillow with kindergarten,  and my seventh graders  2 x 6" Wood Plank Nativity.  Today, I'm going to tell you all about how my eighth graders made this Easter Tableau for school's auction.

I like to scour etsy and Pinterest for ideas for our auction projects for our annual gala.  I look for things that align to my curriculum, each student can participate in independently, and something that will appeal to our gala attendees - not just the parents in that class.

I came across this beautiful "Easter Creche" on etsy.

I liked everything about this product.  The peg people were nice and large, the photographs were so welcoming, and the muted palette was just so classy looking.

I had my reservations about doing a peg people project with my eighth graders.  I attempted it the year prior, and didn't have the greatest results.  When prepping for my 2020 gala projects I saw a pretty cute Catholic peg people project on Pinterest, and thought, "We could do that!"

Uh... in hindsight... there is no way kids made those.

When I attempted our peg people nativity, I thought I was pretty prepared!  I made a handout with some examples and a place for the kids to practice.

I prepped little palettes of acrylic paint and thought I gave pretty clear step-by-step directions to my eighth graders that I only saw 1x/week for 40 minutes.

But, it was kind of a nightmare.  It was taking the class FOREVER. Every week faces were turning into blobs, "Tracing" with sharpies, or using paint pens was not helping. Fingerprints, oddly placed hairlines, and unrecognizable animal species made up our scene.

The final product doesn't look so bad, right?  Well, someone spent a lot of time over winter break repainting, tracing, and gluing halos onto little peg people.  All while trying to make it look like they didn't.

When I saw the "Easter Creche" (which... isn't an appropriate name...a creche has to do with babies. Hence the name for the Nativity scene.) Anyway, when I saw the the "Easter Creche", I really wanted to make it with my class.  But, I had to do it smarter.

Seeing the little chubby hand grabbing Jesus in the photo, I realized those peg people are pretty big.  Maybe my previous mistake was that my nativity people were just too small??  

This wasn't as easy as a fix as I thought it would be.  I found 3.5" "Angels" on Amazon, but the 3.5" "Jumbo Man Doll" was out of stock.  I didn't realize there was only one shop on all of Amazon that sold Jumbo Man Doll Peg People!  But, apparently that was the case.

Most of the figures in the resurrection tableau are women, or men wearing tunics.  The  "Angels" were fine.  I settled for smaller "Dad"or "Man" dolls from Micheals for my two centurions. They were only a half inch shorter.

This time around, I made another handout.  

I let students choose who they wanted to paint.  Everything went pretty smoothly with their sketches and deciding who would do what.

I noted on their handout that we would only be using certain colors.  I wanted to try and mimic the etsy listing with their muted hues.  I filled a set of miniature paint pots for each student. I tried making the colors more pastel than bright, but had varying degrees of luck with that.

This year I'm seeing kids in their classroom for only 30mins/week. I was elated at the end of our second class how wonderful these things were turning out.

SUUUUUUCH a difference from last year.

Of course, class make-up, personalities and skill level plays a part in every art project - but honestly- this class exceeded my expectations with how well they took to this project.

For the tomb I used the smallest from the pack of wooden trays I got from Amazon and used for two of my other projects.  It doubles as a little carrier/place to store the people and has a cave opening painted on the other side.

I was pleased with the results, and parents and gala attendees were too!