Kandinsky inspired art projects

Here in Nashville, it is Artober- a monthlong celebration of all things arty around town.  It's a lot of fun.  In our schools, we chose Wassily Kandinsky as a focus artist (he has an AMAZING retrospective exhibit at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts right now).  Here are some of my 3rd and 4th grade responses to his work. 

3rd Grade- we used Kandinsky's concentric circles as inspiration to create these amazing circle weavings.   I have the students plug the hole in the middle with a button for a couple of reasons.  It's cute.  Also, the center of the weaving is often filled with the most mistakes, since it's the beginning, and by the time we get to the edges, the kiddos are much better weavers.  It's a nice way to finish it.  I hot glued the weavings to mat board, and had the kids decorate the edges with colored sharpies.  It allowed for some element of choice in a pretty regimented project.

 

 



4th Grade- Little more complicated.  We looked at a variety of Kandinsky's landscapes from the more realistic to the mostly abstract, discussing how lines and colors can represent a feeling or an object.  I played Vivaldi's 4 seasons, and students sketched lines to each seasonal song.  From there, students created a circle, and divided it into 4 sections, and each section was to represent a season.  I had them use cray-pas to color, and we attempted some blending with baby oil.  This was hard.  Some had a difficult time with the idea of blending.  They wanted to just keep mixing the colors.  Others just colored as usual and put oil on top.  It proved to be a difficult concept that I'm going to have to keep working on.  But, in the end, there were some really great attempts.  Abstract was also a hard concept to teach to the students, I acknowledged that our brains naturally want to "file" everything we see into a definite category; we want to know what something is. And, we just kept trying and adapting.

Circle Weaving

Thanks to the generosity of my supporters at Donors Choose my students were lucky enough to gain a beanbag and comfy pillow set for the carpet area in the art room.  Did I mention that my principal was supportive enough of my goal to establish a reading corner/meeting spot that she found the money for the carpet?  WOW!  I have had a meeting spot for a few years, with foam letters (hard to clean, and a built in distraction for the littles), but it wasn't big enough for my older students, and it wasn't very warm in the winter. Now, there is space for all of my students, even the older ones.

Anyway, the whole set up happened earlier this week, just in time for my circle weaving project with the 3rd graders.  My deal with them has always been that as long as they are working, they can sit whereever they want to weave.  This week, the deal was once you show me your first color woven correctly, you may go to the carpet to weave with your friends.  The students were very motivated by the beanbag chair and pillows.  And, to my surprise, there was not an argument- they settled things among themselves by establishing a line along the pillows.  It became the norm for everyone to move down a spot when the person in the beanbag chair got up for more yarn.  (I had an arms length rule, so the time was fair). Towards the end, the kids figured out that more than one person could fit on the beanbag, and did a great job sharing. 

Who knew a beanbag chair would bring such unity.  And, the weaving is turning out pretty well too- they were very encouraging of each other, and cheering/admiring their friends as the colors grew. 

***I am very very careful about student images on my blog.  I almost never use them.  In this instance, the students are not looking at the camera, and I tried for some group shots, rather than individual close ups.