Welcome To The Jungle....part 1!

I love introducing students to the art of Henri Rousseau, particularly his jungle paintings.  They love discovering all of the hidden creatures and mysterious stories he tells in his work.  I always start by reading Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown, because the tiger in this beautifully illustrated story wants to get out of the fussy, proper city that he calls home and back to the jungle, sort of like Mr. Rousseau wanted to do through his art.

Then we mixed colors for our jungle collages, which we will start next week.  We mixed our primary colors to get secondary colors, orange for the tiger, green for the jungle, and purple for flowers, butterflies, and snakes, if that's what lives in your jungle.  These gorgeous secondary colors below are the work of Mrs. Quigley's kindergarten class at Bayview.

           Mixing colors is amazing to kindergarteners--the students always oooh and aaah 
            when they see a new color emerge.  It is the closest thing I have to a magic trick!



Amazing drawings of tigers by Mrs. Quigley's kindergarten artists that they drew 
as a preparation for a collage--now they have a plan for which shapes can be used to make a tiger.



Great work, everyone! There are so many details in these drawings, similar to Mr. Rousseau's work.

                                    Stay tuned for the collages, starting next week!

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