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Fifth Grade Students
Teacher: Margot Brown
Fowler School
Maynard, MA, USA

This project was created by 120 fifth grade students in Ms. Brown's art classes at Fowler School in Maynard, MA. The final piece is a synthesis of everyone's ideas.

"To brainstorm, students first looked on line to get more information about symbols of peace from different cultures. After gathering information, each student drew their own design for the project. Many of the designs were similar. About 60% of the students wanted to depict world peace by showing a circle of people from different cultures holding hands around a globe. About 30% wanted to show peace through the hand symbol used widely throughout the 1960's. Many wanted to incorporate flags from around the world to represent all cultures. And some students wanted to create more of an abstract peace that would "radiate" with a peaceful energy. So the classes divided up and all created one part of their choice.

Two classes worked on making the detailed felt people from around the globe. To create authentic and accurate representations, they consulted books on each culture. Two other classes made the 1960's hand peace signs. They learned that different skin colors depend on the amount of melanin in your skin. They worked hard to mix different skin pigments to represent all cultures.

Finally, one last class consulted many atlases to create the small flags from all over the world. The final design is a synthesis of all the literal and symbolic ideas that the students came up with. We all agreed that the focus of the design would be the people from all cultures, holding hands and encircling their earth. We agreed that the circle, with no beginning or end, was the perfect symbol to show unity and peace.

Next, we had to find a place for all of the peace sign hands. After playing around with different designs, we decided to overlap the hands to create "beams" radiating out from the circle~like warm sunrays of peace extending out into the universe. Finally, the flags were used to form a decorative border or frame around the piece. It was a wonderful learning opportunity for the students to create the art piece.

The process itself was peace in action ~ with all students working harmoniously and respectfully as a team to find a way to synthesize individual ideas into one unified vision."

Margot Brown