Matisse Goldfish Project grades 3-5

MATISSE GOLDFISH PROJECT 

I just taught the goldfish project in Mr. Mercuro's 4th grade class last

Thursday. We started with a powerpoint about Matisse (if anyone is

interested in using my slides, email me at brooke@hellrey.com and I will

email them to you).

Here are a few tips I learned while working on this project... I had

them follow along step by step for this project, using the ladybug to

show each step. We drew our cylinders by using a ruler and drawing two

parallel lines, then drawing an ellipse at the top and trying to match

the curve for the bottom and the water line. 

                 Use crayons for: fish (red or orange), water ripples (white), specs

(green and yellow), seaweed (optional if kids want to).

When using the watercolors, have them draw the top water line first, so

they know not to go past that top line. Because they are cutting out the

fish tank afterwards, they can use the sides of their paper to test

their washes. They also don't have to stay in the lines perfectly. We

talked about adding lots of water for light colors, and layering blue,

green and even yellow to get different shades of water. Have them draw

the top part of the cylinder with a light gray.

Here's a few tips on making the patterned background: It's three basic

shapes to make the background. (See the attached drawing) It's just 1 +

2 + 3 glued onto a larger sheet. We had them fold their patterned papers

and cut along the fold. Piece 1 is just a full sheet minus a few inches

on the right side. Piece 2 is whatever width they need to reach the end

of the paper, but it won't be long enough to reach the bottom edge, so

they'll need to piece it. Piece 3 is glued on top of 2 so they don't

need to try to match the diagonal line on the right.