Well we dove right in with 4th and 5th grade, didn't we?! I sure apologize if anyone came home with colorful splatters on their clothes, but boy did they have a good time! And we learned a little bit, too. We started off by learning about 3 very influential abstract artists: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Jackson Pollock. We discussed how Kandinsky created Art to music, how Klee was more influenced by shapes, and how Pollock was the father of the drip method. Can you guess which artist was the favorite in the eyes of 11-year old artists? So you can blame Jackson Pollock for those splattered clothes! Next, we got right to work. I challenged students to not rely solely on the drip method to make their painting interesting, and I'm impressed with what they came up with.
They worked hard and had fun.
The next step of the project was to add some stitching. That's right, we all learned a little about sewing. We learned how to tie double knots and the rhythm of stitching (if my yarn is on the back of my project, I can't wrap it around and poke through the front). We used a worksheet to practice some circular designs, and then we started stitching! Some artists created their own shape and made designs with that, too!