School at St. George Place Elementary: Picasso Unit by Kindergarten

My kindergarten students have been working on a "Famous Artists and Their Styles" unit for their GT Expo this month. We studied the work of Salvador Dali (dream paintings), Vincent Van Gogh (impressionistic landscapes), and Pablo Picasso (cubist works).

Picasso's work was the biggest hit of all three. Cubism is surprisingly accessible to small children. They really enjoyed looking at Picasso's very abstract cubist works and trying to see the "hidden image." They giggled at the portraits of his friends, with the eyes and noses slightly out of place. I got to read them one of my favorite art stories, "When Pigasso Met Mootisse" by Nina Laden. It was a great unit!

Here are our cubist works and how we achieved the effect.

Materials:

tempera paint

black oil pastel

scissors

glue stick

white sulphite paper

black sulphite construction paper

Procedure:

1. Students painted a portrait of their best friend. I encouraged them to use lots of abstract colors as they worked. We just painted in one go, no step by step as I typically like to do.

2. When dry, students traced over their lines with black oil pastel to create more definition and create an outline similar to Picasso's work.

3. They then cut the painting in half vertically. They did a pretty amazingly good cut...I thought there would be a lot more requests for help. We glued it to black paper like a "mismatched puzzle piece," lining up the nose with the mouth on the opposite side. Presto! Kid Cubism!