Each class met separately and discussed the word, “community,” and what it means to them.  The kids shared great examples of what community looks like:

People helping each other 
Big sisters and brothers helping little ones
Parents helping kids and kids helping parents
The importance of pets, and feeding them
The importance of *communication* in community
Their teachers helping them with reading and math
Other students helping them with reading and math
Friends
Family
Their classrooms
Their school
Sports teams
Other people, young and old, who play music or sing or dance together
Neighbors
People in Tacoma, Washington state, the U.S., and the world!

We agreed that people in communities are not all the same, that this can be a good thing, that people help each other, and that working together we can accomplish things we may not be able to accomplish alone.

To capture in art all the different communities the students are a part of, each class pasted fabric onto foamboard “humans.” The background fabric represents their classroom community, red triangles represent their school community, and all the other fabrics represent the many other communities that are a part of students’ lives.

Students shared time, space, paste, fabric, and ideas as they worked to make their creations. As they figured out how to apply wet fabric to the dry and firm foamboard, they helped each other and asked others for more paste, fabric, or help.

Together, the kids created 17 foamboard people. Each one is unique. Each is a community effort. The people can be arranged all together or in smaller groups; according to each classroom, or intermingled across classrooms – in a circle, an arc, a curving line – their arrangements are fluid and can change, just as we move in and among the communities of which we are a part.