It sounds strange - asking children to 'plan'.  One of the great characteristics of kids is their ability to live in the here and now.  Sometimes they have a birthday every other month, just becuase it is fun. 

For this project, I asked the kids to imagine what their finished paintings might look like hanging together.  I asked them to imagine how they would like to see the work hanging together even before they created the paintings! 

"Tell me children, what was one of your favorite things from your visit to the park?"  I asked them to open their sketchbooks up to their favorite page.  The interesting thing is they all had very unique experiences and visuals to share with the class.  How do we possibly create a unified panel for each class without taking away from the expressions of their individual experiences?

Here is a sample of what the children were sharing:

Feeding the birds - Vivan
Rubbing textures from the wood panels that made up the bridge - Mohit
Bow and Elbow River meeting - Chetan
Changing colour from first visit of park to second visit of park - Nicolas
Pathways to the water, the bushes parted to let people through - Alexandra
Walked through secret pathways - Samantha
Found heart-shaped rock - Connor
Surface on the water would change with the rocks - Denika
Leaf imprint in frost - Emma
Rocks and leaves under the ice

There is a long list of experiences generated from the grade 3&4's visits to the park.  An element that went through every class and almost every student was 'leaves'.  Many of them did rubbings and drawings of the leaves in the park.

In order to honor this focus, I thought it would be great to add a structural element to the project.  Each student can construct and paint three leaves, which will then be placed around the gallery and hung from the gallery ceiling.  As far as the paintings go, each child should have the freedom to create their own favorite memory.