Middle School Mendhi Hands

This was the first project that i did with my middle schoolers this year and it was a great ice breaker! I showed them a brief presentation on mendhi/henna hand designs. I also included information on the meanings of specific symbols so I asked them to trace their hand and then, using colored pencil, fill them with designs and symbols that described/represented them. These small symbolic self portraits got the kids talking to each other and allowed me to learn about a little bit about them during those fisrt few days of school.

When everyone was finished, I arranged all the hands onto a page for each class so that it became the classes' collective self portrait.