Kindergarten Mondrian Collages

Reverting back to a good-ole staple in my Kindergarten curriculum!  We did these Mondrian collages as a review of cutting and gluing, but also of geometric shapes, with corresponds with the Common Core math standards in kindergarten (identifying shapes).  Another thing that corresponds with those math standards?  Vertical and horizontal lines!  Boy, if you could have seen the shock on my face when I presented Mondrian to the students.  I asked the question, "What do you notice about the lines that Mondrian uses?" and the first response I received was "They are vertical and horizontal!"  WOW!

I'm not going to get into how we created these because I've posted about it in the past.  You can also read up on how I've used Mondrian in previous projects here.

1st Grade Crazy Pumpkins, Part 1

Once again, I'm changing it up this year for 1st grade.  This year's group of kinders and 1st graders are a bit lower developmentally and behaviorally than in the past, so I have to start a bit simpler this year.  For our first project in 1st grade, we are reviewing basic color theory (primary and secondary colors) as well as talking about what a landscape is.  To tie it into the fall season, we are incorporating pumpkins!

This project has turned into a three day project.  It probably could have been squeezed into two, but the students were actually taking their time to cut and glue the pieces that I didn't want to rush them!  Here is what we did in the first two days.

On day one, we reviewed the primary and secondary colors.  They learned this in the beginning of kindergarten last year and periodically reviewed it through the year.  Each student received three pieces of Manila tag board and wrote their names on the back.  I held up yellow and blue paint, asked the students to share at their tables what color they thought those would make when mixed, and then went around to each student and put a squirt of each color on their paper.

The students then had to mix the paint on their paper while painting the entire thing.  This was also a great review right out of the gate on how to paint properly with tempera paint...no banging the brushes on the side of the water container (wipe on a tissue or paper towel), periodically dip your brush in water to help make the paint spread easier on the paper, etc. etc.  We repeated this until we had painted an orange, purple and green paper.

Purple is always a hard color to mix.  I found that when the students used the fluorescent blue and red, the purple was really pink, which you can see in the pictures below.  With another class, I gave the fluorescent red and regular blue tempera and the purple turned out darker, like my purple in the picture above.

On the second day, I demonstrated how to cut thin, tall rectangles out of the green paper to make grass.  I had students glue a row of grass onto the purple paper.  Next, I asked them to cut out a small, medium and large pumpkin out of the orange paper.  We discussed a little bit about how pumpkins can be different shapes...not always perfect circles...to ease their minds about not being able to cut a perfect circle.  We glued these on next.  (If I had more time with the students and had thought about it sooner, I would have incorporated the book, Spookley the Square Pumpkin...it's a super cute book and there is even a cute, video version of the book.)

Lastly, I asked students to cut out more grass and I showed them how to put grass on top of the pumpkins and behind them to make it look like the pumpkins are sitting in tall grass.

I don't usually start the first project of the year in 1st grade with paint, but I must say that I am extremely happy with the results so far.  This project doesn't require detailed painting so it's a great way to review how to paint with tempera from last year (no banging brushes, swish to rinse, no bad hair days, etc.).  It's also an awesome review for scissor safety and for using dots of glue instead of globs. :)

Lots of students asked to be able to put eyes and a mouth on their pumpkins.  Since 99% of the school population in my district does participate in Halloween events, I can and will allow it.  I won't require it however, in case someone doesn't celebrate Halloween or simply does not want to add eyes and a mouth.  I even had a student ask if he could make the eyes on his pumpkin yellow so that it looked like a glowing jack-o-lantern!

3rd Grade Mondrian Unit (Part 4): Our Finished, Glazed Cubes!

Sorry about the wait in sharing these!  Here are those glazed Mondrian Cubes my 3rd graders created at the end of the school year.  They look awesome!  This is definitely a project that I will be doing again.  It's an awesome way to incorporate Common Core Math (using a ruler, 3-D objects, horizontal and vertical lines, geometric shapes, etc.!).  Again, students could choose to glaze their cubes with primary colors like Mondrian, or secondary, warm, or cool.  Love these!

If you missed my past posts on this project, check them out below!  Part 1 is the introductory lesson, part 2 is how we built them, and part 3 is glazing!

Mondrian Cubes Part 1

Mondrian Cubes Part 2

Mondrian Cubes Part 3

3rd Grade: Mondrian Unit (Part 3): Glazing Our Cubes

On Friday, my last class of 3rd graders glazed their cubes.  This process took a total of two class periods to complete.  I pulled out my tubes of Spectrum Raised Accent colors in black (of which I received when I ordered the Nasco Spectrum Tile kit last year).  I instructed students to paint over their carved lines with the black glaze, and then to paint in their squares.  When one side was finished, they rotated the cube and did the next side.  

If you remember from my first post in this series, students were able to choose from four different color families to design their cube...they didn't have to do just primary colors.  I set up four stations at my tables...one for each color family (primary, secondary, warm and cool), with two different glazes for each color.

One class's glazed cubes!  These were all loaded into the kiln and fired on Friday, just in the nick of time for art show set-up on Monday of next week!!!  I can't wait to get to school Monday morning to see them!  

And of course in my haste to get them loaded in the kiln 2nd period, I forgot to load my cube!!!

Part 1: Introduction to Mondrian & Color Theory Review

Part 2: Clay Cube Tutorial

Part 4:  Finished Cubes Coming soon!

3rd Grade: Mondrian Unit (Part 1)

Currently, my 3rd graders are in the middle of a Mondrian unit.  I've posted before how I've used Mondrian, and in this case, the final project is something new I'm trying out this year.  Before we get to that, however, here is how I opened up the unit.

This unit was started with a substitute as it was during one of the weeks I had to take my husband to his chemo treatments.  My substitute used my power point to introduce the works of Mondrian and to review the mathematical vocabulary that corresponds with Mondrian (i.e. horizontal line, vertical line, squares, rectangles, geometric shapes...COMMON CORE MATH!). 

Students then created these Mondrian animals on white paper using markers and rulers.  This was great practice for them on how to hold a ruler. 

Students cut out their animals and glued them onto black paper to make them look nice and crisp.

After the Mondrian animal project, I was back to introduce students to the final project, which is a clay cube project (something students are currently working on in math...3-D forms).  

On the front of this worksheet is color theory review.  These students already knew what primary, secondary, warm and cool colors were.  The complementary colors were a new addition.

On the back of the worksheet, students once again used a ruler to draw in their lines.  This is where I pushed students to not just simply draw a grid, as many of them did on their animal above.  We looked again at Mondrian's work and students realized that he used a variety of sizes of squares and rectangles.  The final aspect of this worksheet was that students had to color their cube using the color scheme of choice.  Mondrian used primary colors, but I didn't want to hold students to that color scheme, thus the color theory review.

Part 2 of this post will show you how we built our clay cubes.

Part 3 of this post will show you how we glazed our cubes. Coming soon!

Part 4 of this post will be our finished, glaze-fired cubes! Coming soon!

Mouse Color Wheels

This has been a project four class periods in the making...much longer than I intended to spend on it, but as we got into it, I changed my mind as to how it was going to be finalized.  Originally, I was just going to read Mouse Paint with my K-3 12:1:1 class and then have them make mice in the primary and secondary colors, and then place them in a circle to create the color wheel.

But then...a light bulb turn on in my head and I thought..."Why not create a color wheel based on the art in the Frederick book?!"...and ta-da!  This painted collage project was born!

This is my example of the project.

So, on the first day of this project, we read Mouse Paint.  This was a good review of primary and secondary colors for those who have had me for two years already, and a good, quick way to introduce them to the new students in the class.

On that first day, we first colored this worksheet which I found through Pinterest.  Another great example of incorporating Common Core and color sight words for these students.

Also on the first day, I gave students a piece of manila tag board that I had split into six squares for them.  They painted the first three squares the primary colors (good practice for these students to paint the outline and then paint inside their lines) and then mixed the secondary colors on a plate to paint the other three squares.

On the second day, we read the book Frederick.  I had students then paint a piece of manila paper with white and black paint.  We tried to recreate the look of the rocks in the Frederick book.  We also used paint scrapers to add some cool texture to the paint. (In my first year of teaching, I actually did a Frederick project using a worksheet from the Leo Lionni website, which is where I got the mouse pattern from for this project.  You can see those projects here on Artsonia.)

After we cleaned up the paint, we had about 10 minutes left on the second day so I showed students the video of how Leo Lionni made the mice for his books.

On the third day, we drew our rocks and boulders on the back of the grey painted paper and cut them out.  I had the students glue them to white tag board.  Then, they started tracing the mouse shape (like Lionni's version) on each of their six painted colors.  They cut those out too and placed them in the order of the color wheel on top of their rocks.

Finally, on the last day, the students added legs, arms, ears and eyes, just like Lionni did in his video.  This was also good fine motor skill practice for some students to cut out those small pieces and glue them.

5th Grade: 3-D Color Wheel Tutorial

When I left on my maternity leave, my 5th graders were still working on their complementary colored checker boards.  Unfortunately, they took them home while I was gone so I don't have any pictures of what their finished products looked like.  (If you didn't see last year's checkerboards, here's the link to those posts...)  Currently, my 5th graders are creating 3-D color wheels.  If you've been following me for a while, hopefully you remember that I decided my curriculum for 5th grade would concentrate entirely on color theory.  This is a project I did my first two years of teaching with 6th grade (before I started blogging) but did not do last year.  I thought it would be fun to bring it back and move it down to 5th grade where it seemed more appropriate to my curriculum.

Now, this is not something that I came up with on my own.  I saw it in an art magazine publication but for the life of me, cannot remember which one.  I tried to do a search to find it before I blogged this post, but could not.  What I will share, however, is a link to a rubric for this project that I did find in my search, as it is what I am using to model my rubric after for this project.  So, if anyone happens to know or find the publication where this comes from, please let me know so I can link back to it!  I want to say it was from an older publication of Arts & Activities, but I'm not sure...

Ok, here goes.  For this project, each student needs four paper plates.  First, you need to fold all four paper plates in sixths.  

Next I have the students label each plate what colors they should be painted and where.  Folding and labeling the plates usually takes one whole class period.

Front                  Back

Blue    ~     Blue green / Blue Violet

Red Violet     ~      Violet / Red

Orange     ~     Red orange / Yellow orange

Yellow green     ~     Yellow / Green

Next we take two class periods to paint these.  At this point, I still have not found a clean, tidy way to do this, nor a way that prevents wasting paint.  I've done this two ways...in the past, we have painted one side of each plate on one day, and painted the other side the second day.  This time around, I tried to waste paint less by having the students start with one color, say blue.  Then we mixed green, and finally blue green all in the same paint cup.  We cleaned out the cups and brushes and started over with yellow, than yellow-orange, then orange, then red-orange, and so on and so forth.  The only problem with this method is that you end up having to paint directly on the back side of the wet plates, sometimes causing you to get other colors on your plates.  I'm thinking next time, I may set up stations at each table for students to independently move around to.  (The only problem I would foresee with this is students not paying attention to their labeling and painting the plates wrong, but I suppose that would end up being part of their grade...being able to pay attention and such...)

Also, with regards to mixing paint, I tried to let the students mix their own paint, but TONS OF it was wasted because they wouldn't listen properly when we discussed using more yellow and red to make orange, more yellow than blue to make green, etc. etc.  I found that it was better to review how to mix each color with them and then I would squirt the paint into their cups for them to mix at their tables.

The fourth and final class is when we put these together.  First I have the students refold on their fold lines as the paint tends to stiffen the plates back up.  Then I show them how to make their plates into bow ties by pinching them together.  We clip them with paper clips.  In the past, I have used bobby pins, however that can get expensive, so this year we are just using metal paperclips.

Next comes the part where students are on their own.  They must figure out how to get their plates together in the correct color order.

Finally, before clipping the last plate on, I have students tie a big know on the end of a string and stick it in the middle of the plates before attaching the last one.  Now, I have something to hang them from.

And here is the finished product!  I can't wait to share the finished ones with you...I always hang them in my corner display case by my room and they always look so awesome and colorful. I never want to take them down!

I have one class who has all of their plates painted, and another who has one more painting day.  Hopefully I'll be sharing their end products in the next week or so.