kellicrowe

matisse art project - homeschool

Matisse Art Project.

We did this several years in a row in pretty diff ways. I like to pick out a fun artist (ie - someone my boys can stand to look at several of their pictures in a row without asking how many more we have to see) to highlight every week or so.

We do this during homeschool on Fridays. Matisse. Like him. The boys like him. I ordered these little booklets on some of the major artists a few years back from some educational catalog. It has info about his life and kid friendly (ie - not naked) art inside. It also suggested some art projects.

Personally - I think all this could be achieved in a few clicks on the computer. I do not like the library. I know - what kind of homeschool mommy am I? One who doesn't like the library. The books feel germie to me. I know germs can not thrive on books on a shelf....but still.

Matisse project #1 Did this with a 4 and 5 year old I mixed reg. glue and water in a bowl to make the glue thin. I let the kids paint brush the glue onto a piece of poster board. Then the kid tore tissue paper and placed it on the glue. Total time - 20 minutes from start to hand washing. The kids loved tearing the paper. The glue will become the color of the tissue paper if you slide the paper around. SO - I encouraged the boys to just lay the paper down and not slide it.

Matisse was a painter. But he also painted bright pages and then cut the shapes up to use in his collages. My boys were pretty young - so I let them tear the paper. We looked at Matisse's work when he painted and when he used paper. We compared and contrasted the two.

Alex - 4 - made a colorful collage with his papers. David - 5 - made a warrior These pictures are framed and in our long hall way upstairs. In our "gallery."

Matisse Project #2 The following year we talked about Matisse again. This time the boys were 5 and 6. I selected several pictures by Matisse to show the kids. Reviewed his life. The kids were given the squares of colorful paper to fill in the back ground - like in our sample pictures. Then I gave them a bunch of Matisse like shapes of brightly colored paper. They both chose to make a picture of themselves. David's is a tiny figure of himself with shapes (that represent the music) all around him. Alex's figure of himself is much bigger. His lines coming from his head are him talking and singing.

The idea was to lead the kids in a project where we imitated the artist's style. But the kids were not re-creating a particular picture. They still got to play and be creative within the parameters I gave them.

Oh - David liked it so much - he made a dinosaur and several warriors out of his shapes.

The following year we used the bulletin board to make more pictures with these shapes. Matisse would pin his pictures up on a board and move around the shapes for weeks before gluing them down. I think this year when we talk about him - I will let the boys paint and then cut the shapes themselves and have a little more flexibility in what they produce.

 I am not a "memorize this picture" kind of art of teacher. I just want to expose the kids to different ways of being creative. I know some will totally bore them. But some may get them so excited that they can't wait to make more. I just can't ever tell which way it will work out.

Flag Art Project

American Flag Art Project We haven't studied American History yet. Alex loves flags (like his Mommy:) So when he said he wanted to have his new room "decorated to look like the American Flag" I had to come up with a plan. So we came up with some projects to hang on the wall. This is my favorite of them. 

 

1. You need red, white, blue & silver paper, foam, craft paper, wrapping paper. You don't need it all - but look around and see what you have. Construction paper will fade pretty fast - so I would avoid that. Scrapbook card stock is heavier and comes in a variety of colors. 

 

2. cut the papers of red, white and blue into 1 inch squares. It actually looks cuter if all the squares on not the exact same size. 

 

3. Take a large sheet of white paper (I always love to frame up the kid's stuff in those inexpensive frames from Micheal's. So when starting an art project I always make sure my paper will fit into one of my frames) Draw off the flag. Large rectangle in top right, 13 stripes. The first stripe is red. There are 7 stripes next to the blue rectangle and the rest are under it. 

 

4. I wrote a B where the blue squares went, R for red and W for white. 

 

5. Alex, in Pre K at the time and learning his letters, could remember what went where. 

 

6. Glue stick over the area you want to cover. We started with the blue and then went down the page alternating the red and the white stripes. 

 

7. I free hand cut out some silver stars from wrapping paper. I told Alex there were 50 - but didn't insist he put that many on there. The result (because we used the foam pieces too) is a picture that is very rich with texture. It looks kinda folk artie. 

 

8. This project took Alex 3 days to complete because he was so young and his attention span waned after about 3 stripes. We did talk about American History, songs about the flag, who made it, why we respect the flag. American and World History, Art, following directions, improving fine motor skills, communication. K

ABC School Project

One of my FAVE project with the kids. For Pre-K & and Kindergarten: Saw something like this in The Land of Nod cat. - very cute but cost about $98. 

1. Bought 18x24 inch canvas (found that they are not perfect in size). Figured that I could get squares almost 2.14 inch squares, 6 across and 9 down. That gave me two boxes for each letter of the alphabet and then two left over - where the kids wrote their names. 

2. Taped off the squares (masking tape works great and releases well from the canvas). It will take three or four times to tape it off because the tape will over-lap some of the squares. 

3. I gave the kids 8 colors of acrylic paint to choose from. They picked which colors to paint each square. The only rule I had was no two squares sharing a side could be the same color. 

4. Let dry, retape, same process 

5. White sticker letters from Making Memories bought at Micheal's (there are extras in the pack - you will want extras!). I let them color each letter with sharpies (I know - permanent, but the colors are bright.) The idea was to color it in a contrasting color to the block that it would go on. David really got into making his letters into guys. 

6. Each letter they did, they drew a picture. I cut the paper for them to draw on a little smaller than the the square it would go in (so their picture wouldn't exceed the space). For Alex - pre-K, he was learning to id his letters. I gave him choices of things to draw that started with each letter. David, K and working on letter sounds, he came up with his picture ideas. 

7. I cut out each picture and used decoupage glue (mode podge from Micheal's) to stick it to the canvas. 

8. When done, we took about a month to do this, I decoupaged the whole thing about 5 times (letting it dry in between) 

9. I also painted the sides red so it would look more "finished" on the wall. 

10. Occasionally we messed up and the picture or the letter was hard to see on the block. I carefully outlined it in black or put it on white paper and trimmed it again (which ever helped it to show up) 

11. Hung it on the wall. Grandma wanted one - so the kids did it all over a gain about 5 months later. It was interesting to see how they had the whole thing down by then. Art, decision making skills, logic, letter sounds, letter recognition, creativity, art for Mom's wall:)