Paul Klee Artist Study & "Castle and Sun" Art Project

I am excited to describe our first experience with studying a famous artist.  Artist study is something new I've added to our curriculum this year.  I have the whole year's worth of artists, works of art, and art projects planned out.  I wasn't sure until I began what the children's response would be. 

Today (Monday) I introduced our first artist, Paul Klee (pronounced "klay").  First we talked about what an artist is and what an artist does.  I asked the children if they are artists.  I was pleased that most of them realized that they are artists.  I told them that each time they create something that didn't exist before, they are making art.  It could be something they build with the blocks, the brown stair and pink tower, OR it could be something they draw on paper OR it could be something they make with glue and paper. 

I read a few pages of the book Getting To Know the World's Greatest Artists:  Paul Klee. And then we studied the poster "Castle and Sun" by Paul Klee. This poster was donated to our classroom by one of our families through the Giving Tree.  Thanks so much to that family!  Before telling the children the title of this work, I asked them to raise their hands to tell me what they noticed or saw in the painting.  They named several of the shapes, we talked about the bright colors, and one student thought it looked like a castle.  Then I told them that the painting is called "Castle and Sun."  We practiced saying the name of the painting and the name of the artist.  Below you can see the book I read from along with a little card I had made to show them what Paul Klee looked like.  We passed the card around so they could get a close look at him.

Next I told them that they could make their own versions of "Castle and Sun."  I set up this activity as shown below, hanging the laminated poster above the table for reference.  Below that I set up a vinyl mat, a tray of shapes, a glue stick and a tray of black construction paper cut into half sheets.

The shapes shown below are made from sturdy two-sided cardstock.  They came from Discount School Supply in a huge package of all squares.  (NOTE:  The link shows something very similar to what I bought from DSS a year ago; however, mine are not the shiny metallic ones they have now.  They are just plain bright colors.)  At my Materials Making Night one of the parents cut many of the squares into triangles and used a scrapbooking circle punch to punch out circles.

I printed out a bunch of address labels which said, "Castle and Sun" by __________ so we could affix one of the labels to each finished piece of art with the child's name written in.  Below are a few photos of some of today's masterpieces.

Comments

[Laura]

Hi, JJ.That sounds neat. I would love to hear more about how you incorporate movement into your artist study. Sounds really fun! Thanks for writing!
Laura

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[JJ]

We developed an integrated arts program last year and are just beginning year 2. I love to see it in practice somewhere else. We do a music, movement and art integration each month. The kids LOVE it!

[Jessica]

do you think it would be possible for you to post the rest of the artists you are planning on using? i definitely want to use this idea in our classroom, but don't know much about artists myself.

[Julie]

If you would like, you can link this up at Artists and Art http://theadventuresofbear.blogspot.com/2010/09/artists-and-art-week-1-wassily-kandisky.html

We study/look at an artist every week (though some weeks the artist is the same) and do a response art work. I will keep your post in mind when we look at Klee.

[winnie]

How often do you plan to introduce a new artist?

[Kate]

That looks fantastic - I've been looking for artists to study in our kindergarten class. We're doing Piet Mondrian right now, but I think Klee will be our October artist. Thanks for the idea! Do you know any other artists that you plan on studying yet??

[Laura]

Thanks, Kristin. Your school sounds like a neat place!
Laura

To: directress@live.com

[Laura]

Thats a great idea! Thanks for sharing!

To: directress@live.com

[Kristin]

I loved this post! I teach at a Montessori school and my classroom is called the Klee Room, after Paul Klee. We do a Klee study every year, and have done many artworks based on his work. This looks like a really fun one to try! Thanks for sharing your amazing work with the rest of us, you always are an inspiration!

[Annicles]

If you want to extend this further we used the shapes from the geometric cabinet to make our own versions of this work.