On the way home from our field trip to the beach, we were finishing up one of our history books, The Skippack School, about Mennonite school teacher Christopher Dock and the early German settlers. When a student would learn all of his letters, or get to a certain level of reading, or score really well on a test, Master Dock would present that student with a certificate he had made by hand in fraktur, an early German lettering style which was often accompanied by watercolored birds, plants, and geometric designs. (See the pictures below the students' art for a few examples of these.).
I wanted my students to have the opportunity to make their own little fraktur paintings. First, I gave them a copy of a fraktur alphabet. We each then made just one capital letter -- the initials of our first names. After taking one art period to carefully outline and color in the letter, we spent the next two art periods sketching and painting at least one bird and one plant. We found samples of these from older works of fraktur. So, even a first grader can do fraktur! And we all enjoyed doing it, too.
This is a bookplate made in 1825 by a Mennonite in Pennsylvania.
This is one of Christopher Dock's works of fraktur.