Kindergarten: Alma Woodsey Thomas Mosaics

This project was inspired from a post by Hope Knight, a colleague of mine who writes the blog, Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists. The artist of study, Alma Woodsey Thomas, is a fairly new artist to me. However, she is a Georgia artist and so I have really enjoyed getting to know about her work and it fits right into our curriculum. 

This assignment is the second piece my Kindergartners have completed this school year. We focused on the piece, The Eclipse (pictured above). It was an interesting contrast to our first project about Mr. Mondrian and we had a good time comparing the colors, arrangement and style between these two artists. It was fairly amazing to me that my students picked up right away on the sun theme in Thomas's work without my explanation. Great perception from my little artists!

Day one: each student received a 9x9 white paper, a lid and a small black piece of paper. After tracing the lid onto the black paper and cutting out the circle, they glued it to the center of the white paper. Then paper strips were cut and/or torn into small squares to form rows that radiated around the central circle. A few classes used only warm colored paper strips while others had more choice in color (I always tend to try things several ways with a new project).

Day two: students learned about mosaics and proper paint etiquette. Before painting, I asked students to try really hard to make at least 3 rows around the central circle. They used a watery combination of blue + green tempera paint in the background and in between the mosaic pieces.