Paul Klee’s “Highway and Byways” was the inspiration for these pieces created by our Fourth Grade artists.
Paul Klee “Highway and Byways”
This project also focused on our school-wide goal of improving student math number sense with a deeper understanding of fractions. Fourth grade students used their knowledge of fractions to divide their paper space into halves, thirds, and fourths. They chose a warm or cool color palette and used watercolor to fill in their spaces. The finished pieces are a reflection of their use of color, shape, line, and of course…fractions!
See more of this project at our Artsonia on-line art museum.
And – special thanks to Miriam at Arteascuola for this project idea!
What did you use as the paper? It looks like book pages?
Tara…I photocopied pages from a book onto 8 1/2 x 14 legal size paper for the project. The kids used the sentences to help them guide the placement of their horizontal lines, plus it gave some extra texture to the background.
Hi.
Can you explain a bit more about how you use this assignment to talk about fractions. Sorry if I am a bit slow to the take on this, but I am not seeing the flow of math learning and desperately want to make a concrete connection. This project is gorgeous!
Thanks.
Hi Liz – thanks for visiting our blog! The use of fractions and number sense for this project was presented in two ways to my 4th graders. We used rulers to divide the picture space, and spent quite a bit of time just looking at the ruler itself and finding the fractions of 1/4, 1/2,etc. in an inch as well as on the entire 12″ ruler. The kids then used that understanding of the ruler as they divided up their picture space. They were asked to divide their space into thirds to create the “road”, and then made their own decisions about what fractions/numbers on the ruler to use for additional divisions of the paper. Hope this helps a bit. Really, the project was focused more on exploring and using the ruler in simple ways as well as thinking about how to use a ruler and fractions to divide up the picture space. Many students had difficulty just reading the ruler and figuring out how to divide the space into thirds, etc. so the project turned out to be a good learning experience for them as they broadened their fraction and number sense.
Thanks for sharing and for linking my website arteascuola.com . Your pupils’ works are amazing!
Thanks Miriam!