Monday, June 13, 2011

Tessellations

Fifth graders learned about the artist M.C. Escher and tessellations.  This was a great art & math connection.  We used the translation, rotation and transformation (slide, turn, flip) techniques, which are also 5th grade Math SOL's.  Tessellations are created by making a repeated pattern and shape, and then fitting those pieces together like a puzzle.





Monet Waterlilies

First grade students used a variety of Claude Monet's water lily paintings as inspiration for their own artwork.  We talked about Monet as an artist, and the impressionistic time period.  This was a two day project.

Day 1- As a class we aanalyzed the paintings & discussed the cool colors.  Then I demonstrated how to draw a bridge. Students used cool color crayons to add waves and color to the bridge.  Next, they painted the background with cool color water color paints.

Day 2- Students discovered that the basic shapes of a circle & triangle can be used to create a waterlily.  They used green construction paper and green tissue paper to create the waterlilies. To add the flowers, they used yellow and pink tissue paper scrapes.