Your Friends Will Be Impressed With Your Family Crest

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I first learned about family crests as part of a journal writing assignment when I was in college.  I have used them for creative art journal entries before, but not as an art project until this year.  We were reading Johnny Tremain, and, if you've read the book, you know that Merchant Lyte has his family crest on his carriage, his silver cups, etc.  So, while we were reading this book for history, we made our own family crests.  

Any of the four designs can be used, as well as any other creative ones that your students may dream up.  (Don't you love it when students ask, "Is it okay if we do it this way?", and it's something different and creative?)

Next, I encourage students to answer these questions and then draw pictures of items that are meaningful to themselves and their families.  I have them make a little written list of these before they sketch out a rough draft of their crest:

 

What do you enjoy doing?
What things are important to you?
What does your family enjoy doing together? 

What are some of your favorite activities? 

What makes you happy?
What is unique about you and/or your family? 

Using pencil, we then sketch pictures to demonstrate the answers to these questions and then figure out into which section of the crest they will fit well. 

It is also helpful to give students a printed fancy alphabet for them to use for their last names on the top of the crests, and I encourage students to sketch everything in pencil before using fine point black markers for the black lines and acrylic paint for the rest.  We displayed our finished products at our colonial fourteen course dinner and history night.