((To see last year's post of this project, click here.))

One of our cross divisional Arts team two year goals is to have every grade level from K-12 create some sort of a collaborative visual arts project.  I haven't done this quite yet with every grade yet, but am excited about this abstract collaborative project done for the second year with 2nd grade.

We looked at images of Kandinsky's artwork and together as a team, students spent four class periods creating these large abstract paintings.  For more information about the process, click the link above.

I was exploring the wonderful world of Pinterest a while ago and came across this awesome blog post smART class: Hip Hop Kandinsky murals and was super excited about the project.  I took direct inspiration from this super fun project.  I decided to take it into my own hands and do a similar project with my 2nd graders.

 After looking at and discussing the artwork by Kandinsky, 2nd grade students were paired up or put into groups of three to create a painting together.  The students had to really focus on collaboration and working as a team.  Each time we began with a new color, they had to talk to each other about a few places to paint with that color.  We also talked about being accepting of the others' choices with painting even if it might not be the same as theirs.  Every five minutes or so, I had them rotate the paper (poster board) so that they were constantly looking at it from different angles and painting along their partners painting.
The students said they had never did art with another person before and loved it.

The students started on white paper and began painting with black lines. We talked about what abstract means and to draw lines, shapes, and designs rather than things like cats, houses, and trees.
After using the black, students in one class added red, yellow, and blue. The other class used red, yellow and purple.  This was mostly so that the two classes artwork was slightly different.

We spent three 45 minute class periods working on these.  Once finished, I put them all together and the students discussed what they found interesting and fun about this project.  

"It's neat how we all had to follow the same directions, but they all turned out really different."

"When they are all next to each other, they look like one big giant painting instead of a bunch of small paintings."