Fabulous Art with Fabulous Kids!

First Graders rocked the house with their shape self-portraits.  We looked at the Swiss artist Paul Klee and learned about his life...he was an art teacher, a poet, and a violinist!  Definitely a man of the Arts.  We looked at a variety of abstract and realistic artworks, and even played a game of identifying which works were abstract, and which were realistic.  We looked over Klee's work and decided he was quite abstract.  A discussion of lines, shapes, and artwork titles helped us understand what we were looking at.  Sometimes a title means everything. 


When we looked at "Head of a Man," we knew we were about to do something interesting.  Students were given a plastic bag full of tag board shapes, and had to make our self-portrait using only shapes.  It was such fun to see how everybody's work came out.  We first drew with pencil, then outlined them with marker, and then colored them with crayons that matched the color of the marker they used.  Students had lots of fun making their faces all kinds of colors. Some students used wild colors along with their wild shapes, so we had some very interesting self-portraits!  I really love this lesson.  Take a look at the results: