Romare Bearden-Using a variety of materials and ideas to express yourself

How can I as a teacher create a piece like The Block that my students can relate to and want to engage with?

The website had six main parts to it:
Guided tour-This part of the website gives you a tour through Bearden's piece, "The block". The tour is an auditory tour and it takes you through each part of the panel explaining what Bearden is trying to show in each part. He uses collages for his piece, as well as contrast between everyday activities and a very imaginatively display of this block of Harlem. This tour also explains the different types of materials Bearden uses such as photographs, cut outs, and different writing utensils.
Romare Bearden-This part of the site gives you a background on the artist and his own cultural background.
Look closely-This part of the website lets you zoom in on "The Block", and look closely at what's in each window, and in each part of the streets. You can also read about how it was made, how it was composed (using geometrical rhythm of rectangles within rectangles), why he used a collage, and points to specific things to look for such as private life of the people and the public places.
Look & listen-This part of the website explains how Bearden used jazz to help him compose his work; "Think of the colors and shapes of the collage as notes of music that make up the whole composition".
Things to do-This part of the website is children directed. It has different activities to get students involved with The block, by looking for specific things in the piece. It also has options for children to look for different fun shapes and to compare playwrights with Bearden's paintings.
Learn more-This part of the website provides  more resources for children, young adults, and adults to learn about Bearden's art.

I thought this website was very interactive and fun. It is definitely children friendly because it has a lot of resources for parents or teachers to use with their children. The website really lets you interact with the art piece; you can zoom in to different parts of the piece, see how jazz relates to the piece, and more. I would definitely use both, a website like this one with all these resources and the idea of making a big piece that represents different aspects of a specific things. A project you could do with your students would be to create your own "Block" but about the classroom. This would get students thinking about different geometrical shapes as well as ideas that need to be included in the concept "the classroom". It would also give students a chance to express their feelings and thoughts about their classroom by using a variety of materials and ideas.