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Grade: 3-8

Age: 8-14

Activity Summary:

Objectives

• Students will learn about the difference between organic and geometric shapes.
• Students will learn about warm and cool colors.

Vocabulary

• Geometric Shapes: such as circles, triangles, or squares have perfect, uniform measurements and don't often appear in nature. (from the Walker Art Center)
• Organic Shapes: are associated with things from the natural world, like plants and animals. (from the Walker Art Center)
• Warm Colors: make us feel warm -- (reds, yellows,oranges).
• Cool Colors: make us feel cool -- (blues, greens violets).

What You Need:

• pencils
• paper (8 1/2" x 11" -- two sheets per student)
• pencil crayons or crayons or oil pastels
• a ruler or straight edge (optional)

What You Do:

1. Talk about geometric shapes and organic shapes. (See vocabulary above). Find examples in and out of the classroom.

2. Talk about warm and cool colors (See vocabulary above).

3. Have students divide both of their papers into six squares, using their pencils. They can do this free hand or they might wish to use a straight edge or ruler.

4. On sheet #1 -- using a pencil, have students fill each of their squares with organic shapes. These should not be recognizable objects. Rather, they should just be shapes. They can then color their shapes in using only warm colors or cool colors.

5. On sheet #2 -- using a pencil, have students fill each of their squares with geometric shapes. These should not be recognizable objects. Rather, they should just be shapes. They can then color their shapes in using only warm colors or cool colors (whatever they did not use on sheet #1).

6. Display the work together.

Recommended Books:

Museum Shapes
An exercise in both art appreciation and recognizing shapes, this book invites children to find one of 10 geometric forms in tiled details taken from several dozen artworks owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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