KANDINSKY ACTIVITY

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1955), was a Russian painter who was one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting. 

We have choosen this artist because we think that there are a lot of interesting paintings for children. Kandinsky has several eye-catching atworks, so children are going to be attracted to them. All his paintings are full of colours and shapes, so we can teach different things such us sizes, colours, numbers, shapes (circles, squares..), lines and so on.

It will be great to devote one term to teaching and working a lot of artworks from Kanddinsky. 

The painting we have choosen is "Kandinsky circles"

First of all, we have to introduce this painting, so we can use the computer and the projector to show it to children. We are going to ask our children some questions in order to learn things about the artwork:

• Which shapes can you see in the picture? How many?
• Which colours can you see?  

We can do a game to make sure that all the children have understood the shapes. We can ask them to stand up and look for circular and square things in class, such as rubbers, the glue cap, papers and so on. When they have found them, we can talk about the sizes of them asking: Which rubber is bigger this one or the other one? and questions like that with all the materials. 

For instance, to make sure that all the children have understood the different colours we can play to "Simon says": "Simon says that the children who wear something blue have to stand up" or "Simon says that the children who wear something red have to jump"... 

After that, we think that we can teach the circles in a funny and tasty way. We can use plastic or paper plates and food that has circular shapes and different sizes, such as biscutis, vegetables in pieces (carrots, tomatoes, courgettes...) and so on. Children will have to put the bigger food under the smaller one in order to do something similar to the painting. We have done an example of the idea at home:

The last activity that we have thought is related to crafts. We have to give each child a piece of paper and colours (crayons, markers...). Also we can use plasticine in order to make the circles with that. Children will have to paint in the paper the painting of Kandinsky. When they have finished all the pictures, we are going to join them making a big mural in order to hang it in the wall of the class.

PRODUCED BY CRISTINA BELTRÁN SABATER AND EVA MARTÍN VEGA