Life lessons using art : Franz Marc "Two Cats"

Hello.
My little one's school has a program called Art Masterpiece, and of course I had to get involved. I am a true believer of using art to communicate with children and other people in general.

Enter: My in-progress degree in interior design, Go Devils!

In any event, what I do for the program is I go in to the Kindergarten class and teach them about famous pieces of artwork. I tell about the artist, what movement or era they worked in, and translate what is going on in the picture into something the children can understand.

My first presentation was today [ Jan. 30, 2014]
The artwork: "Two Cats" by Franz Marc

I started off explaining how Franz Marc was an Expressionist, which meant he liked to use his work to convey feelings to others. Mentioning that his parents were both artists, I was surprised to see a great show of hands in the number of children who recognized that they had artists in their families or as friends.

Then I moved on to reading "The Mixed Up Chameleon" by Eric Carle, which related back to my concept that colors can evoke feelings.

 



When we finished the book, we went over examples of how colors can make us feel a certain way. Using the example of how the chameleon wanted to feel strong, so he turned into a big gray elephant. They told me of other examples that they had personally experienced; feeling "blue" or "green".

 

Before the presentation, I made this worksheet to complement the concept of the artwork. I asked the children to color the chameleon to represent the way that they were feeling today.

 

 

You are welcome to use this, just be sure to give me credit!

(Photo from:http://users.manchester.edu/Student/MJJohnston/LiteracyProject/chameleon-2.gif)

 

And that was that! The children had a great time and I practiced my presentation technique ;-)

 

Until next time, thank you for reading!

-Lauren