Thursday, April 24, 2014

Jackson Pollock Butterflies


Here I am in front of one of the many displays at the Saint Aloysius Art Show. The Jackson Pollock Butterflies was a new lesson I came up with this year. The book I used to introduce Jackson Pollock to my students was "Action Jackson" by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. The students enjoyed the story and looking at his many splatter paintings. There is also a really great youtube video that shows many of his paintings in a slideshow here: 
 Action Jackson
Students seems to be amazed that they could easily make their own small-scale splatter painting. 

We didn't stop there. The next week, I had the 1st graders tell me what they had learned about butterflies in their science lesson that week. Some questions I asked were:

What are the parts of a butterfly? 
Where do they come from?
When and where do we see butterflies?

We then used our Jackson Pollock paper to make symmetrical wings for our butterfly. Students cut out their own butterfly body, eyes, and antennas.

They turned out super cute and perfect for spring. Hope you enjoy.... and Happy Spring!!!