Critical Thinking with Mondrian

I truly believe that art is an important part of our curriculum. Children should not just be taught to be creative, but they should have opportunities to see what that looks like. They should be given opportunities to express themselves in different ways. My students go to art once every 6 weeks and even though it's not part of our district curriculum's focus--I find ways to sneak it in.

Today we learned about the artist Mondrian and about primary colors. The students looked at works by the artist and we learned a little bit about him. We looked at his paintings and talked about how it made us feel, what it made us think of. Then the students made their own versions. I did cut out the shapes and lines, but I made various sizes and thicknesses so they really had a lot of latitude in their creations. When they were done I asked them to think about why Mondrian used line and primary colors the way he did.