Steal like an art teacher

I didn't just use Phyl's project for 4th graders, I stole most of her Matisse lessons for the month.

Second graders created Fish-Ish, inspired by both Ish and Matisse. Ish was already one of my favorite books, and one I read to classes at the beginning of the year. I liked the emphasis on it for this lesson, though. Students had a pretty hard time painting the background. I think I will make it simpler if I do this lesson again. However, by the time we added the fish bowl, table and leaves, the project came together fairly well.

I also used Phyl's lesson for "Wild Beasts." Like hers, we talked about how Matisse was a fauve, which means wild beast. We used bright colors and patterns, in the style of Matisse, to paint our animals.

Matisse Still Life

This lesson was taken from Phyl. Her students' paintings turned out so phenomenally. I was excited about the lesson with my fourth and fifth graders. And then, things weren't going so well. Either students weren't mixing any colors or they ignored my directions of mixing the colors NEXT to each other on the color wheel, which of course became mud. The more we worked on them, the worse they seemed to be. So, I gave up. We started our clay projects and moved on.

Then, I pulled them out to grade. I realized that, more than anything, they just weren't finished. We pulled the paints back out for one final day of painting. Much better. I think we all needed to step back from them a bit. Maybe the kids were bored. Maybe I was bored. This time, I also emphasized outlining items with black.

And the rest on exhibit in the hall. We have these boards above the kids' lockers for display. It's kind of weird to me looking UP to the work, but at least the kids do not have their hands on them.