Paint like Kandinsky!

Earlier this year I did a one day activity with my students in 2nd-5th grade.  On the SMARTboard we looked at some of Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings.  It was so fun to hear what the students 'saw' in his work- their interpretations were awesome!  We also watched some videos on YouTube of musical animations of his work.  This one is the best!  'The Kandinsky Effect'

Then I had the students listen to two different songs and we painted two seperate paintings.  One was a slow, opera-like song from the movie 'Ponyo' and the other was a fast, upbeat, jazz song from the movie 'Rushmore'.  Then we discussed the differences in the songs and how the two songs resulted in two very different paintings.  It was a great hour-long lesson that I would do again in a heartbeat!  Very fun, free and successful!!!  Yippie!

Here is another video I used- they were a great tool to bridge between studying his paintings and then understanding how music was a predominant theme in Kandinsky's work.