Fiona, your stormy sky is spectacular! I don't get the chance to travel much. But that doesn't mean I don't love seeing, hearing and reading about exotic locales. Anthony Bourdaine, The Travel Channel, The Amazing Race, and travel memoir books - you might say I'm an official arm chair traveler. So I thought it would be fun to create some surreal hot air balloon collages with my classes this month, allowing each child to choose their own locale. My original post can be found here. I found some great landscape and global landmark calendars from the .99 Cent Store. So the first step was letting each child choose their destination from my collected calendar pages (these were cut out). From there, they created wet on wet watercolor sky backdrops using their choice of colors. On white construction paper, we created one large hot air balloon following a basic step by step lesson. These could be customized and designed using markers or oil pastels. Smaller balloons were created using painted paper and scrapbook paper to give the collage pieces a sense of depth and perspective. This was a fun project for my kindergarten through 5th grade groups. This lesson was inspired by and dedicated to my dear friend Gretchen, who traveled the world and lived life to the fullest!