Today was the first session of our Creative Kids Art Club!
I piggy backed on an idea I read about in After-School Clubs for Kids by Lisa M. Shaia. (I highly recommend this book if you’re stuck in a program rut!) Her Masterpiece of the Week Club focuses more on illustrators but I wanted to teach the kids about real artists and their art.
Today we discussed Wassily Kandinsky. I chose Kandinsky because there’s an amazing juvenile biography about him and his work called The Noisy Paint Box by Barb Rosenstock; illustrated by Mary Grandpré.
This book was a perfect introduction for the kids about Kandinsky and abstract art. After we read the book I ran through a short slide show with some simple facts about Kandinsky and showed them some pictures of his artwork.
Then we created some of our own art based on his Color Study. Squares with Concentric Circles piece. I got the idea for our art project here. We were in a room with carpeting so we didn’t use paint for the little circles, we used markers. (And I wanted nothing to do with glitter so suffice it to say, there was no glitter in our art either!)
Our supply table after the kids ransacked it:
And here’s my example:
We had some very creative trees with birds and bird houses and even a squirrel!
I also set out some art books for the kids to take home if they were interested:
This program was easy to create and super cheap. We only needed scissors, markers, glue sticks and construction paper.
Next session, Picasso!