Mondrian Extension

The Mondrian cubes I did with 5th grade was one of those projects that had students working at all different paces so I ended up doing an extension with early finishers. Its just a simple as they look! They could draw anything they wanted and were encouraged to use a ruler to break up their drawing into squares and rectangles and color with primaries. Like most extensions many students took it another direction, but as long as they were engaged and creating with purpose I let it go!

You will see a few pumpkins/ghosts as this extension happened the week before and of Halloween :)

What can I say? They know me.

Mona Lisa!

Mondrian Inspired Cubes!

One of the perks of teaching a lesson the first time is that you can use student suggestions and input to make it way better than you intended. I luckily have a great batch of 5th graders that start my rotation out to give me really great input!

I love Mondrian, no matter how boring some people might think his work is, I see such beauty and simplicity in the basic primaries. I just can't resist sharing Mondrian and his work with my students but I do like to mix it up ergo the cubes. I did the project below with my 2nd graders and Mondrian last year.

Day 1: Intro to Mondrian. I give them a little background info about him and then we watch this seriously amazing animation of his work on YouTube.

We look carefully at a few of his works and then I introduce the project by talking about cube vs. square. The rest of the class is spent creating their template for their cube by tracing pre-cut 4x4 squares onto a 1/2 sheet of poster board and following this guide I made them :)

Day 2: Right away when they come in, I show them more SERIOUSLY awesome YouTube videos inspired by Mondrian.

The music isn't great for this one so I usually mute it...

They freak out over this one...

So here is the part where they changed my mind:

Originally on my example I only did traditional Mondrian (square/rectangles/black lines) and they were like "Lets do any geometric shapes or shapes with straight edges only." After pondering a moment I was like "THAT SOUNDS AWESOME" And tada!

Here are a few mid-process ones...

After 3-4 more work days these beautiful cubes were born and held together with tacky glue!

Hints for the cube:
I had pre-cut 6"x12" strips of each primary and 4"x12" black for them to use to limit paper waste.

Put them together last, they don't take up too much space week to week if you wait until the end

Score all of the edges and tabs with a ruler before working on the designs and re score right before putting it together... makes things A LOT easier.

Check out these stunning works! By the way, I was inspired by this everywhere on Pinterest post for this project...

Jefferson Elementary...

McDill Elementary...

You may call it busy work, I call it an extension!

Every once in awhile (and usually with older students) I have projects that cause students to work at drastically different paces and I end up with half the class needing one more day and the other being finished. When this happens instead of "free art", I come up with a one day activity that the students can take with them that usually involves simple materials like coloring. I don't asses these projects, nor do I hold on to them for any time. My students also know that if they don't finish the activity in that class they take it with them done or not.

Sounds like busy work right? From an outside perspective it usually does but I try to connect these activities to the project they just finished making it an EXTENSION of that project. I also think the students really enjoy these because they know that they can get silly and really think outside the box and not feel any pressure. Plus they get really excited when I snap a picture of it and tell them it might end up on my blog!

Here is the most recent extension I did with 6th grade after they finished their Keith Haring!

I introduced postage stamp art to them (a few were like "what are stamps?" GASP!) and watched part of this youtube video (about two minutes) of how they are made.

I showed them a few examples of famous art that has appeared on stamps and art stamp series. Then they had a choice of designing a page of stamps or a single stamp that reflected either Keith Haring or if they were famous artist, the stamps that would be designed for them. I think Keith would have loved stamps with his art on them!

Here are a few pictures! P.S. This was right before Halloween ergo the pumpkins!

Happy Belated Halloween!

Happy Belated Halloween!

Halloween week was INSANE. Squeezed in a few of these make and take pumpkins with my older classes that were ahead!

Pre-cut 9"x 2" strips of orange. Each student needed six. They designed to their liking, I encouraged Zentangles over just writing and drawing whatever. When they finished designing, we stapled together the ends in a radial burst and then the other end to form the ball. A little green scraps for the stems and paper clips to hold them until it dried and VOLIA!