Colour and Build a Hippie Van
There is something wonderfully excessive about the decorated vans associated with the 1960s and early 1970s. Bright colours, flowers, swirling patterns and oversized lettering could turn an ordinary vehicle into something completely individual.
For this activity, I wanted to use that visual culture as the starting point for a relatively simple colouring and paper-craft project. While it can be enjoyed simply as a fun van to colour, my intention was to build a few additional layers into the activity: thinking about design across a 3D object, experimenting with lettering, and imagining an identity for the people who might travel in it.
What Was Flower Power In The 1960S at Douglas Reddin blog
A little inspiration from the Sixties
The visual starting point for the activity comes from the colourful vans associated with the hippie and counterculture movements of the 1960s.
For a younger audience, I wanted to keep this introduction focused on art, music and visual expression. These vans provide a wonderful example of people taking an everyday object and treating it almost like a moving canvas. Bold colours, hand-painted words, flowers, symbols and psychedelic patterns transformed something functional into an expression of personality.
And, of course, the Mystery Machine
There is another colourful van that inevitably comes to mind: the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo.
Scooby-Doo first appeared in 1969, and the Mystery Machine makes a fun side reference for the activity. Its bold colour combination, oversized flowers and distinctive lettering give the van such a strong visual identity that it feels almost like another member of the gang.
Starting a fictional band
This is where I wanted to push the activity beyond simply colouring in a van.
Before decorating anything, children can imagine that the van belongs to their very own fictional band. They might decide what their band is called, what kind of music they make and what sort of personality the group has.
Are they loud and energetic? Dreamy and strange? Cheerful? Mysterious?
The intention isn't to develop an elaborate story. It is simply to give their visual decisions something to respond to.
A band called The Electric Bananas might end up with a very different van from one called Moonlight Monsters.
I’ve included a small accompanying worksheet in the downloadable activity: name your band, choose a few words to describe it, select some colours and sketch a few symbols or patterns that might represent it.
Worksheets available for free download below!
Thinking around all four sides
A value of this activity is that it will get kids to consider a design from all 4 sides and try to achieve a kind of consistency with the entire design. The children begin with a completely flat template, but the final object is three-dimensional.
That means there isn't really just one picture to design.
There is a front, a back and two sides, and I wanted children to think about how those different surfaces might belong together. A pattern could travel around a corner. A colour used prominently on one side could reappear somewhere else. The band's lettering might dominate one panel while smaller symbols appear across the others.
For older kids, you can also use this opportunity to teach shadow making and or gradient making too!
Cutting and Constructing
And now… We move towards cutting everything out and assembling the van.
Until now, the design has existed entirely as a flat drawing. Folding and joining the surfaces transforms it into an object that can be picked up and viewed from different sides.
It is also a useful way to practise scissor skills. Children have to follow straight edges, navigate corners and carefully cut around smaller tabs. For those who need a little help, cutting roughly around the template first makes the paper easier to handle before tackling the finer edges.
Alittle bit of sticky tape or glue is needed to hold some of tabs in place.
A printable art activity where kids create a fictional band, design their colourful van, then cut, fold and transform it from 2D into 3D.
Learn about the product here!
Free downloadable activity
I'm putting together a free printable version of this activity with a Design Your Band planning sheet and a colour, cut and build van template, so the project can be easily tried at home or in the classroom.
The van template is best printed on A3 paper
