Kandinsky Colorweaver

THis is a great activity for students that finish work early instead of just a free draw. THis is from Art Projects for Kids: Kandinsky Colorweaver Wassily Kandinsky made a beautiful painting called "Color Studies" back in the early 1900's that is fun to imitate with oil pastels instead of watercolor. 1. Distribute 9" x 12" pieces of art paper to students. Give them rulers to measure and draw pencil lines across the middle of the paper in both directions. 2. Ask the students to start in the center and with an oil pastel, draw an angle and fill in the triangle that is created. Continue around the center with drawing triangles, only changing colors each time. 3. Once a diamond is created, add bands of color around the diamond, always changing color on the pencil lines. Continue until the paper is filled with color. This picture was made by a kindergartener in an afterschool class.

Snowflakes...

This is a quick and fun lesson on symmetry and cool colors... I had the students draw snowflakes with sharpies. We then went over the lines with regular crayola markers (cool colors). They took a paint brush and spread water over the markers to make it blend. The next week we added white glitter to the snowflakes.

Aliens from Planet Symmetry

Symmetry

I knew my third graders were reviewing symmetry and I was tired of the old butterfly. So I decided to have them make aliens. Of course they started by picking a color for their alien, folding the paper, and then drawing a curvy line.

It was neat to see all of the different shapes that were created and the students were very excited to decorate their aliens!

Woven Chinese Dragons

Materials:
9x12 White paper
Black tempera cake paint or watercolors
Oil pastels
6x9 black paper
Book: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier

Day 1

1. Woven Chinese Dragons! Second grade learns about China in March and April.
2. Read: Legend of the Chinese Dragon by Marie Sellier. Talk about the animals that make up the dragon: ox, fish, horse, serpent, bird.
2. Artists designed and colored two sheets of paper- one with dragon scales and the other with an abstract design- all in oil pastels. Talk about abstract shapes. They start from a real object, but the lines are very messy!
3. Then they painted over these papers in black tempera/watercolor.

Day 2
4. Next the artists cut strips from the scales page and wove it into the other page to create the dragon's body.
5. The artists learned about symmetry to create their dragon's heads that they cut from black paper and then designed with oil pastels.
6. The artists cut necks and tails and then colored them as well before attaching them to their dragon.
7. The artists cut out and colored two sets of people legs- just like the ones that carry and dance the Chinese dragons!
8. Finally, the artists can write their names in Chinese to finish their projects.

Fall Symmetry

Students receive one sheet of 9x12 paper and a half sheet of a different color. Students draw half of their image on the half sheet of paper. After cutting out their image and saving all of the pieces, they glue it to the full sheet of paper.