Montessori Art: Curved and Straight Lines

Montessori Art, this is probably my favorite areas of the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE all areas of the Montessori classroom... I basically bleed Montessori but if I had to pick a favorite it would be art area. When I decided to start years ago to really getting in depth with the children about art, I wanted to start from the basics of what art is and how its created. Sometimes its messy and loud and sometimes its clean and quiet. There is just so many sides of art and how to incorporate it into your classroom. I would like to take a few post and show you guys what I have done in my classrooms to expose children to the beauty that is art!

First I always like to show basics, so this is just work on lines. I know it sounds silly and way to easy, but I promise you it will hold their attention and wonder! Lines are great to start with because it shows children how some art is started, it may just be a line here or there but when you connect them it can be just about anything. Children see what just making simple lines can and do and the next thing you know they are creating their own work with just using lines. 

This is just sorting curved and straight lines.

I went online and found different pieces of art work that had lines in them. Then I just printed them, put on black backing (why I don't use bright colors, because you always want the work to be the focus on the child's attention and nothing else). I have the chirlden sort the straight and curved lines

On a tray, I have a basket full of cut yarn pieces, glue, construction paper, different pictures of lines. They children can choose which picture they would like to do and they can take it home when finished.  

I always like to show different artist who use lines in their work. I will also put these on my shelf to allow the children if they want to try to make their own version of the art work. 

Piet Mondriaan

Geoff Slater

Lyubov Popova

And so many more!

I had an extra Geometric Cabinet, so i was fortunate enough to be able to use the extra squares insets on my shelf for this work. I know this is a rare that a teacher would have this but if not you could always teach the children to go over to the cabinet and use what they need out of it. Anyways, I have a different sized insets, primary colored pencils and one black, white paper, and a picture of Mondriaan's work. One thing I want to point out is that I don't ever tell the children it has to look like this exact work. I want them to get ideas off f it and if they want to do it just like his then that's great also. 

If you go to google and just type in "color pages" and add what your looking for, you can find a ton of stuff. I found this by just putting in "color pages Mondriaan" I colored a master and laminated it and made copies for the children. 

This was just a piece of work in the art area that had strips of black paper, primary paints and white paper is all. Just some different ideas for your classroom. 

Part of the Body and Skeleton

 We are always trying to make different work for the classroom. I found these great copies of the human skeleton and a child's body. So, I made a billion copies and started labeling them to make a master copy for the children. I them laminated them all, placed them on rings and made copies for the children. We are excited to have this on our science shelf... now if you are thinking that the Parts of a Skeleton is too much for the children, its not! Sometimes it takes a few days to complete but most of the children will spend a good time on time wanting to finish the whole thing. I encourage the children that if the need to take a break from it they can put it on a tray with their name card and finish it the next day. This works great, I have yet to have someone not finish it.

Oh the joys of Montessori work!

 This is a great piece of work I found online and I just had to make for my classroom! It's super easy, just go out find a few rocks or buy them. I looked online for free clip art and found some pink series words and printed them on card stock. Then I put pink paper for backing and laminated them. I used a sharpe pen to write on the rocks and there you have it! I great piece of work for the language shelf.

I use scrape paper in my everyday life adn decided that the kids would like a change of cutting paper. This is just a fun idea for scrap paper you might have laying around your house. p.s. this was gone within a few days, I love that they all worked hard on their cutting skills building those muscles and coordination!

I made this work from just felt and printing labels. Its a little more time consuming but such a great activity for the science shelf in the classroom. The children loved using it and labeling the work.

Parts of a plant work for the science shelf that I also made from felt. I just traced the back of it and cut it out that's it!

Can you tell what we are studying! Since we are studying plants/rain forest I decided that we need a rain forest one since the children went crazy over the first two pieces I made above.