Friday, November 19, 2010

1st Grade, Paul Klee Project

I LOVE blogging because it is a great way to share project ideas. I found this awesome lesson on Use Your Colored Pencils. This project was based after Paul Klee's painting, The Castle and The Sun. It also just happened to fit perfectly into the curriculum right now because my students have been studying shapes in math class.
To begin this project, I gave each child two triangles. I then challenged them to figure out how to use these two triangles to make a square. Most of my students figured this out quickly. After that, I gave each child four triangles and asked them to figure out how to use all four to make a bigger square. It was fun watching them slide the triangles around until they figured it out. Once they had this figured out, I had them start building their castle out of triangles.

It's funny because this project seemed extremely simple to me, but my first graders absolutely LOVED every minute. They were extremely proud of their castle creations. Some of my students even drug their parents in after school to show off their artwork.

3 comments:

  1. This is wonderful! I will reference in my blog.website:
    TheMotorStory.com. you may want to refer to this as it reviews visual perception-so people can see the great value of these activities!

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  2. Thanks Holly for posting this and linking back to me - they look great all together!

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  3. Paul Klee is a great artist to teach students about colors and shapes.

    Last year I did a project with the Kindergarten class based on his work "Head of a man". The students did an amazing job. I did not have a blog last year but I do have the pictures on my pictures folder.

    Your students did justice to Klee's "The Castle and The Sun"

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