Marc Chagall

Second graders recently studied the work of Marc Chagall. His paintings often included farm animals like cows, goats, and roosters, as well as memories of life in his village. We began by mixing tints and shades of blue for the background, drew many houses, and added silly goats playing violins with painted paper. Students really enjoyed the dream-like paintings of Chagall!

The Starry Night

Fourth graders just studied Vincent Van Gogh! They looked very closely at The Starry Night and created their own versions using oil pastels to blend colors!

Gustav Klimt Ideas

I am just fascinated with the art of Gustav Klimt. Here are a few of my favorite lessons-the Klimt cat and the Tree of Life-that were inspired by his paintings. I love to use the book Klimt and His Cat (although I had to get my markers out to add some more clothes to some of the characters!) These projects were taught to first and second graders.

For the tree, we began by painting with gold paint. We decorated our trees with squares of scrapbooking papers, sequins and jewels, and crumbled up tissue paper balls.

The cat is my favorite. We used gold paint to make the cat, cut it out, mounted it on black, and then used oil pastel and cut paper to make Klimt-inspired designs on our cat! Glitter would have been cool on this project, too. Maybe next time!