Mondrian Squares

My good friend Matt from http://lawnim19artisticfreedom.blogspot.com/ told me about this lesson and I had to try it.  It was a tough one for most of the first graders but they improved by leaps and bounds with their measuring and cutting skills.  The first thing we did was talk about the art of Piet Mondrian and how his artistic style slowly changed and evolved into an abstract and geometric obsession.  The students thought that his paintings were very interesting and loved that I pointed out one of his paintings that had been hanging up in our art room since the beginning of the school year.  I used one of his silly titled paintings, Victory, Boogie Woogie to win over any students who were still unsure, that got lots of laughs.

I started by teaching them how to use a ruler to measure from each end of the paper and make measuring marks which we then used our ruler as a straight edge to connect the dots and draw a straight line wherever they wished to make a line.  Students hard a bit of a struggle doing this at first but with lots of demonstration and a helping hand they caught on very well.  We drew lines parallel to both sides of the page, making some close together and some far apart.

In the next class we used primary colors to start painting any sections that we wanted.  I had the students paint two sections with each color and after they were done I let them paint a few more with whatever color they wanted.  We were very careful to stay in the lines and fill each section as best we could.

In the last class, I was mean haha.  I could have very easily cut a whole bunch of black paper strips for the students to glue on over their drawn pencil lines, but I figured since we were learning how to use rulers, I am going to have them measure their own strips and cut them out.  I taught them how to measure some thin and thick black lines and told them that cutting them out was like walking on a tight rope between two HUGE sky scrapers.  The scissors were our feet and we did NOT want to fall off the tight rope.  In the first class I did this with, I began cutting the first line in front of the students and just randomly said "Big cut, straight as an arrow.  Big cut, straight as an arrow..." and I looked up to see every student watching, wide eyed and bushy tailed repeating my every word "Big cut, straight as an arrow."  Haha it was awesome.  They also repeated the phrase as they cut out their lines at their tables for the rest of the class and once in a while I still hear them saying it when they cut things out.  We then glued their lines and matted their projects.  Overall, lots of learning.  Thanks Matt!!