Saturday, December 21, 2013

Picasso Self Portraits


I am finding literacy to be one of my favorite parts of my job! I just love reading to the kids and am amazed by all the clever books I keep finding! This story was incredibly clever and really did an awesome job comparing and contrasting Picasso and Matisse. The illustrations for each character were very characteristic of the actual artist. And they were fun! The kids were highly engaged in the story and laughing out loud. My favorite line to read was "Your work looks like paint-by-number!" I wanted to say "A-burn!" like on HIMYM. 


This was another quick, one day lesson. The younger kids seem to do better with these types of lessons. I forces them to work work hard and stay engaged for the time they have. Most of them hate the thought of not finishing, so they stay pretty on top of things.

We started by drawing the basic shape of the face, and I showed them how to do a few different hairstyles they could do for boys and girls. Then, I let them pick out four little pieces of construction paper in whatever colors they wanted. I gave them some ideas about different facial features, but reminded them that Picasso's features were not realistic or proportional. They used pastels for these. I think adding the white pastel to the eyes made a world of difference. 


To finish it off, I had them made blocks of color on the rest of the face. With this particular class, they picked the skin tone they wanted for their background construction paper. Other classes, though, just picked and  random color. I think I preferred the multicolored ones. The peaches and browns just looked a little dull for Picasso. 


O course most of them could not resist a mustache or some sort of reference to "Minecraft." I'm okay with that, though. Someday they will look back and say, "Remember that year that everyone loved mustache symbols?" 

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