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Museum of International Folk Art
Events & Education: Curricula

Pop-up Dream Books

Objectives
1. Students will understand that pop-up dream books are a three-dimensional book art form whose structure complements and describes the dream they are illustrating (historical and cultural understanding.)

2. Students will learn about what materials were employed and how they were used to evoke different types of dreams and books (perceiving, analyzing and responding.)

3. Students will find different solutions in the process of creating their own pop-up dream book (creating and performing.)

Correlation to New Mexico Art Content Standards
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

Materials
Stiff paper such as card stock or recycled manila file folders (two pieces of equal dimensions for the cover and inside) approximately 8" x 14," one piece of stiff paper approximately 4" x 6" for the pop-up, masking tape, scissors, pencils, markers, decorative papers such as magazines, old wrapping paper, calendars, etc., glue sticks, writing paper.

Motivation
1. Talk about dreams. Brainstorm to make lists of words that describe their dreams. Do students have reoccurring dreams? What are their favorite dreams?

2. Tell the students that they will be making their own three-dimensional pop-up dream book and that the part of the book that pops up will be the most important part of their dream. They can use dreams that they have had as subject matter or make up a dream to illustrate.

Procedure
1. Hold up a prototype (made by you!) of the sample of the type of pop-up book that the class will make. Explain that they will start by deciding what the background (one of the big pieces of paper) will be. They can think of the background as the setting or scene for their dream.

2. Students use markers, pencils, and decorative papers to create a background.

3. Next, they need to decide what they want to pop-up. It could be a human character, a plant, an animal, an object or an imaginary shape. Students draw their pop-up element on the smaller piece of paper.

4. Students cut the pop up element and apply color with pencil or markers or by gluing on decorative papers.

5. To determine where to place the pop-up and cut the tab, fold the background in half. Open it up, fold it backwards and slide the pop-up element along the folded edge until the student is happy with its location.

6. Make two marks on the background with a pencil about an inch wide.

7. Cut through both layers of the background, creating a tab. Fold the tab back and forth to let it know where to bend.

8. Open up the background and push the tab forward. Make a circle with a small piece of masking tape and apply it to the tab or the pop-up element.

9. Tape the pop-up element to the tab.

10. Use the markers and decorative papers to make a cover. Use glue stick to adhere the cover to one of the backsides of the background, leaving one side of the background unglued.

11. Apply glue stick to the writing paper and adhere it to the unglued side of the background.

12. Have students write their dreams, then copy onto the writing paper.

Evaluation
Display the pop-up books so that only the pop-ups are visible. Have a pop-up book reading have students read their written work aloud and the class has to guess which pop-up book it is part of.

Create a class dream where each student writes a line and then add the lines together. Have each student make a pop-up section describing their contribution. Glue all of the pop-up sections together to create a multiple pop-up page dream book.


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