Mmmmm....Mmmmmm.....mortifying!

My Hundreds Day lesson centers around Andy Warhol's familiar 1962 painting of "100 Cans." Students discuss the definition of "art," analyze the painting and then poetically apply Wahol's passion to soup to their own favorite (or least favorite) foods. Finally, we set a deadline in order to reach our classroom goal of collecting one hundred cans of soup to donate to our local food pantry. We are holding steady at 93 cans with six school days remaining.

This is where I make my connection from picky eaters to being nit-picky. Oh my goodness. So...I want my bulletin board to reflect our theme, right? As my friend, Sarah, has explained to me, the first foundation of any respectable bulletin board is the correct border. Yeah...okay. My theme is soup. So I meticulously cut and pasted a ka-zillion clipart images of soup cans, trimmed them to size, laminated the strips to then staple them around my bulletin board. I detest flat space so, to make my display POP a little, I wrestled a giant construction paper soup can into place, never anticipating that my 4th graders would spend the bulk of their time trying to wear it like a hat.

I then added student art.  Each student created an Andy Warhol-inspired multi-block print of his/her selected subject. Voila! Yet, as I sat at my desk facing my "finished" bulletin board each day, I was left feeling unsatisfied. Empty, even. And then the muse struck...the Campbell Soup Kids! I printed off copies, carefully cut out each Campbell Soup Kid face to be replaced with images of my own 4th graders. Mmmm... Mmmmmm...good!  Reactions to the unveiling were mixed. Some found it hilarious; others...horrifying. The one boy who successfully completed the entire assignment and was "honored" with his likeness lacquered to my wall is likely never to do his homework ever again. It is said too many cooks spoil the soup. But it only takes one tasteless teacher to traumatize her students. They will never look at a can of soup the same way ever again, thanks to Andy Warhol and Mrs. Mosiman.