First Grade Mondrian Inspired Fish

First grade. Whoa. Sometimes I feel less like a teacher and more like a ringmaster. It's incredible how much they grow up throughout the year. For me, first grade is all about skill building and getting the basics down. For example, this particular project is all about primary colors. It is also an introduction to painting with tempera paints. It's a whole new world for many students. 

This lesson is so simple that I don't think I really need to post an official plan. We start out by describing the characteristics of Piet Mondrian's work. We also discuss why he paints like he does as opposed to creating realistic work. Students then draw a large fish on 12x18 paper and draw shapes with horizontal and vertical lines. On day two, they paint primary colors. I encourage them to leave some white spaces, but many are too psyched about painting and they paint the whole fish. On day three, students cut out their fish, glue it to a black piece of construction paper, then cut the black paper to create a border for the fish. Some students then finish a bit of painting and the others work on a Mondrian vocab word search I made. Overall, I'm really happy with the results of this project. Of course my first graders love it as well. I think some of them would paint all day every day if they were allowed. 

1st Grade Color Projects

I'm the type of person who likes to make and use lists. It makes me strangely happy to check things off as I complete the tasks that need to be done. One of my lists includes all of the various projects that need to be posted on here. You know how it is, though. Between daily prep, lesson planning, state assessments, having time for my daughter and staying sane, some items from the list get neglected. 

This is a catch-up post. Both projects are from 1st grade and both relate to basic color theory. This first one is a lesson I've used for several years, but changed a little this year. Nearer to the beginning of the year, I teach 1st graders about primary colors and Piet Mondrian. This year, I went away from the basic rectangular format and used basic fish shapes. Students drew a Mondrian style composition inside and painted with primary colors. The finished work was then cut out, glued to black construction paper (to emulate Mondrian's linework), and cut again.

Download the lesson plan!

 The second project in this post is my 1st grade introduction to secondary colors. I found this awesome YouTube video from Sesame Street to show my students. 

The video is another classic from the band OK GO. If you're a follower of this blog, you may recognize the band from an amazing video that I use with my machine brain project in 3rd grade. 

For this project, students set up their paper with six squares. Each square has three circles inside. This gives the kids plenty of room to try out their colors. I think the best part of this project is seeing how my students react to how paint colors change as I mix them. They are absolutely mesmerized by the transformation. I give students 2 classes to paint. They get to use the mixing trays on the first day, then they "graduate" to the full paint trays that the older kids use. 

Download my lesson plan! 

1st Grade Primary Mondrian

1st grade students are more excited than you can believe about painting.  Almost every single time a 1st grade class walks into my room, some asks, "Are we going to paint today?"  For this project, they got to do a lot of painting.  We started the project by talking about the work of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.  We have already talked about geometric shapes earlier in the year, so the kids were excited to see some of those shapes in famous artwork.  Another big emphasis with this project was talking about primary colors.  Students started out by drawing out several shapes and painted them with primary colors.  Later, they later glued on strips of black paper to finish the project.

1st Grade Primary Mondrian

1st grade students recently learned about the artist Piet Mondrian.  They learned that Mondrian used geometric shapes and lines in his artwork and that he mainly used primary colors.  1st graders used Mondrian's work as inspiration in their own primary color paintings.

First Grade Primary Colors

A big part of what first graders are learning is color. For this particular project, students learned that red, yellow, and blue are called primary colors. They also learned about an artist named Peit Mondrian. They learned that Mondrian painted with mostly primary colors. Students then created paintings similar to those of Mondrian. They turned out really well!