Paul Klee: Cityscape in Right Triangles

Paul Klee was the inspiration for three of the projects in pre-K this year. His investigations into the fundamental qualities of art (shape, color, pattern, etc.) make him an excellent topic of study for little artists.

To begin the project students experimented on the SMARTboard combining smaller shapes to build larger ones (such as two trapezoids to make a hexagon). From there we went the other way and took larger shapes and broke them down into smaller shapes.

In preparation for creating our artwork, students worked together converting piles of colored squares into pairs of right triangles by cutting diagonally across the middle. 

Students glued squares onto their papers to create images of tall buildings or bridges. They placed the right triangles they made earlier over the squares.

We used the use of triangles as an excuse to talk about the ways triangles are used in real construction projects due to their structural strength, looking at photographs of girders and trestles.