What a fun week with 1st graders this has been!!! To start the lesson we revisited what we learned about Matisse last week and used that as a link to the art of Kim MacConnel. MacConnel's work is said to be influenced by Matisse (and Picasso). Using images on the Smartboard, students compared MacConnel's lines and colors to those of Matisse with a great deal of insight!! Yeah, 1st graders!! (see previous post for link to MacConnel's art)-- it is such a strong example of color and line design!! We talked about how artists learn from each other all the time.
The twist that we added to these collages was the use of letters to spell a "happy" word. Midway through the period, kids came back to the rug area and we played a quick game of "Hang Spider" (my non-violent alternative to Hangman -- I use a spider hanging from its web instead of a person) in which the word was s-m-i-l-e. We had a brainstormed list of other 5-letter happy words (kitty, puppy, proud, happy, mommy, dance, music, etc.). Students applied these letters to 5 circles in their collage in a scrambled form so the viewer would have to figure out the "happy word". Kids loved this puzzle aspect of the work.
I loved watching the kids create their colorful designs and all the results were pretty dynamic!! There were so many opportunities to make choices of color, line and placement during the process. I had not taught this lesson before and I think it is one of my favorites for this year!! ...And an added bonus, there are NO SCRAPS and hardly any CLEAN UP!! Whoo-hoo!!!!!!!
Cute idea!
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of Kim. I have some fun research to do. I love learning about artists who would be great to integrate in with a project.
ReplyDeleteLove it! Thanks.
Love the bold graphics here! Looks like it was a very successful project...
ReplyDelete