Lines in a Ring

 Taking our cue from Kandinsky's "Circles in a Circle", first graders created "Lines in a Ring" last week. I started and ended the lesson with Jeanette Winter's, Henri's Scissors, a great little book about Matisse's collages.

I started by showing kids how to work with their desk partner to fold a piece of paper so that the corners remain together and the fold is even. One person holds the 2 matched corners and the other does a "finger walk" from the open end down to the fold and then creases right and left. (Sorry I didn't get a photo of this process -- it's easier than it sounds!!) Even with my warning and demonstrating AND emphasizing to start and end ON THE FOLD, we had a few who had to re-do!!!

 Then we used painted papers from the previous week to cut and position creative lines. Students worked on the back side, so the hardest thing to remember here was to put the dot of glue on the ends of the PAINTED side of the paper strips. They also put a dot of glue between the intersecting lines.

 The last step was to choose a color on which to mount their creation:))

 Looks like this batch chose yellow or blue backings -- I actually had lots of color choices available. 

It was fun to see how students attacked the arrangement of their lines. Some were symetrical all the way and others embraced asymetrical or totally random.