The weariness of cutting endless 3” x 3” squares of paper has been burned into my memory enough to take this project out of the rotation for several years. But I love how the 2nd graders’ collages turn out and how students learn so much about Kandinsky and Howardena Pindell, so I decided to give it another try.

I introduced students to Wassily Kandinsky and we compared and contrasted his paintings. It was interesting to see how they saw things in his abstractions.

We painted our own abstract paintings, then I cut part of it into 3” x 3” squares to use. I cut 6” x 9” construction bases and about (what felt like) 5000 3” x 3” construction paper squares. We created our 1st circle in square together. Then they created their own circles in squares.

Once they had all 6 squares completed and glued onto their base, they picked out a construction paper background. They then glued their 6” x 9” collaged circles in the middle of their background.

Once it was all glued, we had a class discussion about Howardena Pindell’s circle based collages. After that, I passed out several stickers to the students and they continued with their own circle-based compositions.

I didn’t think about it until I’d taught it to a couple of different 2nd grade groups that referencing and studying Yayoi Kusama might have been even a better choice over Howardena Pindell since Kusama used stickers in her obliteration room installation. Next time, ha.