Kansas Day Art

I enjoy doing some kind of art activity for Kansas Day, maybe because it is my birthday so it seems sort of special to me.  I always remember doing Kansas Day activities in school when I was younger and since it was around my birthday the two seem to coincide in my world.
I wanted to do a school-wide project, but wasn't sure I'd be able to top or compete with my big birthday cake I did last year for Kansas' 150th birthday. 
But I came up with an idea and my K-6 students created self-portraits to help create the state of Kansas to celebrate Kansas Day which is coming up on January 29th.  I believe the hard work and time put into this project to prepare was well worth it.
I used my projector to create a map of Kansas with its counties(much harder than it sounds only because it was on such a large scale), then cut them all apart and had each student draw a picture of themselves on their own county.  When they were all finished, I put them back together like a puzzle.

With only 105 counties and way more students I had to find a way to allow all of my other students to make a portrait too and incorporate it into Kansas Day.  I decided to spell out Kansas Day and have my students portraits on each letter too.  It worked out pretty perfect based on the number of letters and the number of students I had left after the map.

Here are some close-ups...I couldn't get the whole display in a picture straight
on because it is in the hallway outside our cafeteria.

I enjoy doing big art displays and keeping things somewhat of a secret to my students so it is a surprise for them to see when it all comes together.  It's always priceless to see their faces when they see it together and they find their picture they made :)