Woven Space Invaders

Upper elementary and middle school students recently discussed the art of weaving and its parallels to computer technology and video game design. We talked bout how comparing the look of classic arcade video games to today's games demonstrates the advancement in technology for many aspects of our lives. 

This is a great lesson for weaving, art and technology history, careers in art, or you could also touch upon Invader, the international graffiti artist. I found the idea for this lesson at Minieco Tutorials, where there are lots of modern paper design projects as well as lots of other cool stuff.

I had examples of Space Invaders for my students to chose as reference, and they created a weaving using their own color choices. Then I asked them to design their own creation. For these original designs, we worked on graph paper and paid attention to symmetry and color. Students also had to figure out ways to make more than one color appear on a single row, and how to come up with an effective design with limited amount of space and color choices.