Longing for spring: printing flowers!

You need:

1. piece of linoleum of 12 by 12 cm
2. several sorts of paper
3. lino knives
4. block printing ink
5. flat piece of glass
6. linoleum roller
7. lino press
8. coloured cardboard 34 by 12 cm
9. scissors
10. glue or stapler

Students draw one or more flowers on their piece of linoleum and cut it out. Then the flower has to be printed on three different sorts of paper. In this lesson I choose for coloured construction paper, a brown paper bag and white white woven towels from the dispenser. Cut the prints with 1 cm around. Paste or staple them on coloured cardboard. Spring can come!

Both artworks are made by students of grade 4

Wild flowers

You need:

1. black construction paper 20 by 8 cm
2. colour pencils
3. tempera paint
4. q-tips
5. saucer

A short lesson with great results! Draw a lot of flower stems on the black paper with several colours green. Stamp the petals above and between the stems, using tempera and q-tips.

Patterned landscape

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A5 size
2. black fine marker or Indian ink
3. coloured paper for background

Children sketch a simple mountain landscape with grey pencil. Use different patterns to colour the mountains: spheres, lines, triangles, squares, leaves - as different as possible. Patterns can by filled negatively of positively: fill a moutain with circles and colour the space between them with black, so the white circles will remain. Paste the drawing on a coloured background.

Made by students of grade 3

Concentric circles Like Kandinsky

You need:

1. drawing sheet A3 size with 12 squares of 10 by 10 cm
2. temperea paint
3. brushes
4. paper towels
5. jar with water

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944) was a Russian-French painter. His style of painting originally belonged to expressionism, and is sometimes included in symbolism. Kandinsky was one of the artists who gave shape to the abstract art in the early twentieth century.

Kandinsky was inspired by music. According to his own timbre theory, each colour has its own language and expression, and each colour has a soul. Kandinsky tried to convert musical compositions into paintings. He heard colours in music and he saw music in colours. This correlation between music and colour is the starting point of this lesson. Show students images of by Kandinsky. Tell that he listened to music while painting. Look at the painting 'Squares with concentric circles'. Which circle would belong to cheerful music? And what kind of music did Kandinsky hear while painting the dark circle?

Students are going to make a painting in the style of Kandinsky while listening to classical music. During this lesson they listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Each student gets a white sheet with 12 squares of 10 by 1o cm. Tell them to work from the outside to the middle. We may see no white anymore. Try to avoid two the same colours in one circle. Hang all paintings together on a bulletin board for a great group project!

Made by students of grade 1