This is my favorite Kindergarten project ever!  It’s a no fail project and they love it.

We talk about Piet Mondrian and look at his paintings.  We talk about the primary colors and they find as many blue, then red, then yellow things in the art room as they can on an “art safari”.  I show them his earlier paintings and ask them if they know how he went from painting trees to an abstract line painting.

We watch a cute animated clip on YouTube that shows his painting progression and is set to music popular at the time he painted them.

Then we talk about lines and their directions – we act out with out hands as we stand up vertical lines, horizontal lines, and diagonal lines.

I demo how to cut a black skinny strip of construction paper and glue it on.  I pick one person from the group to decide if it’s horizontal or vertical for my demo.  Then I show them how to use a glue stick and glue it.  After about 10 volunteers have picked different directions, we have a grid!

But before we do any grid building, first I show them how to paint with tempera paint hockey pucks.  I learned that it’s a good idea with kindergarten to isolate colors in plastic bowls and paint only blue, then only red, then only yellow.  This a great time to show them how to paint without worrying about rinsing their brushes after each color.  Just paint away!

Then they dry and I pass out their grids.  I demo how you get a color you want, cut it, test it out in between the black construction paper.  They temptation is to just cut it out and glue it over all their beautiful black grid lines, but I show them how to “give it a haircut” to fit if theirs is too big or just add another piece until their section is covered if the first part is too small.

I love how this keep them engaged and excited every step of the way.  Have fun!

And here’s a real Piet Mondrian painting below, Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1937-1942.