Classroom Activity

Art Starters: Wassily Kandinsky

Part of Art Tales for Pre-K

Wassily Kandinsky was a musician as well as a painter—sometimes both at the same time! Kandinsky believed that paintings, like music, could express and inspire feelings in everyone. Many of his paintings have bright and bold colors that he thought connected to specific sounds and music.

Black lines and one small, black triangular shape stand out against patches of color, in indigo and sky blue, pumpkin orange, butter yellow, emerald green, and ruby red, against a white background in this vertical, abstract painting. The paint seems thinly applied, resembling watercolor. Near the lower right corner, the black shape is roughly triangular and has five curving, parallel lines emanating from the bottom. Given the title of this painting, Improvisation 31, Sea Battle, the black lines could represent tall masts and outlines of sails amid areas of vibrant color that make up a boat and water around it.

Grade Level

Subject

Language

Look

How many different colors can you find? Name them.

What kinds of lines do you see? Choose a line and use your finger like a paintbrush to trace it in the air.

Can you find two boats in this painting? Can you find a city? Or do you see something else?

What color would you use to express different feelings—Happiness? Sadness? Excitement? Anger?

If this painting were a piece of music, what might it sound like to you?

Read

The Color Monster (Spanish language version: El monstruo de colores)
By Anna Llenas

Color monster has lots of feelings - and a little girl helps him figure out what his feelings are through color.

The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky's Abstract Art
by Barb Rosenstock and Mary GrandPré

Young Kandinsky - "Vasya" - wants to paint to make music. This book tells the story of his life and how his synesthesia allowed him to explore the different possibilities of art.

Make: Paint to music

You Will Need

  • Paper
  • Paints
  • Paintbrushes
  • Music to listen to

First, choose a special song or piece of music. Close your eyes and listen to the music. How does it make you feel? What kinds of lines, colors, and shapes do you think of as you listen to the music?

Next, listen to the music again—this time, while painting. Start with a background color (or use colored paper) to show the overall mood of the piece. Then, as you listen, paint a line that follows the melody. Pick a shape, such as a circle or square, and paint it every time you hear a part of the song that repeats. Finally, add colors inside and around the shapes that match the different feelings the music inspires in you.

Vocab Bank

  • abstract
  • battle
  • inspire
  • melody

Download

Art Tales: Coloring and Cut-Outs booklet (PDF, 3.5 MB)

Art Tales for Pre-K (PDF, 7.2 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte (PDF, 7.5 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte: Colorear y Recortes (PDF, 3.7 MB)

Visit

Register for the Art Tales pre-K school tour

Submit Student Work

Send images of your students' projects that follow these activities - email [email protected]

You may also like

A small child stands facing us on a sun-dappled path that runs up the center of a garden dominated by towering yellow and burnt-orange sunflowers in this loosely painted, vertical scene. The light comes from our right so long, sea-green and plum-purple shadows cross the peach-colored path. The path is wide at the bottom center of the canvas and narrows as it reaches the steps of a house, beyond the garden. Close to us, four blue and white porcelain urns line the path, separating it from the grassy banks to either side. The urns are filled with tall stems with coral-pink and cardinal-red flowers. The child stands about halfway back along the path, where the garden transitions from grass to the banks of tall sunflowers. A few strokes in front of the child could be a small dog. Behind the child, a woman and another child stand on the steps. The woman wears a cornflower-blue and white dress, while both children have bare legs and wear white clothes and yellow hats. All three have indistinct facial features and peach-colored skin. The house spans with width of the composition. It has an amethyst-purple roofline with two chimneys, and the petal-pink walls have mango-yellow highlights. Windows are covered with blue latticework. Above the house, fluffy white clouds float against a vibrant blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting at the lower right in dark blue, “Claude Monet 80.”

Educational Resource:  Art Starters: Claude Monet

A lesson for preschool to kindergarten students about artist Claude Monet’s painting The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil. Students learn how to look at this painting, what you can read to learn more, how to draw a garden, and a list of vocabulary terms related to this activity.

Educational Resource:  Art Starters: Joseph Cornell

A lesson for preschool to kindergarten students about artist Joseph Cornell’s artwork Untitled (Medici Prince). Students learn how to look at this artwork, what you can read to learn more, how to build your own story box, and a list of vocabulary terms related to this activity.

Two angular, cream-white buildings flanking a central, stylized tree are surrounded by brown soil, small animals, and farmhouse objects like watering cans and buckets beneath a clear, azure-blue sky in this square landscape painting. We look straight onto the buildings and slightly down onto the earth in front of us. About a third of the way up the composition, the horizon is lined with trees and mountains in the deep distance. The long, spindly branches of the central tree nearly reach the top edge of the painting and abstracted, sickle-shaped leaves are silhouetted against the sky so no leaves overlap. The far edge of the whitewashed structure to our left is cropped. The façade is pierced by two small rectangular windows and an arched hatch at the top under a winch. The back end of a horse is visible through an open door at the bottom center. Horizontal bands in front of the building suggest furrows in plowed earth, and a single stalk of corn grows up into the scene, seeming close to us. A pen protected by netting stretches out in front of the second structure, to our right of center. That wood-frame building has a triangular peaked roof, and the left half is open, like a lean-to. A goat, rooster, birds, and several rabbits occupy the pen. Watering cans, buckets and pails, a hoe, newspaper, lizard, and snail are spaced around the buildings. A tiny stylized person, perhaps a baby, appears in the distance between the buildings near a well where a woman works. A covered wagon, a round mill, trees, and plants fill the rest of the space between the buildings. A disk-like moon hangs in the sky to the right of the tree. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, "Miro. 1921-22."

Educational Resource:  Art Starters: Joan Miró

A lesson for preschool to kindergarten students about artist Joan Miró’s painting The Farm. Students learn how to look at this painting, what you can read to learn more, how to create a collage, and a list of vocabulary terms related to this activity.