Monet Waterlilies

Claude Monet-Waterlilies

I decided to try a Monet project with my 3rd graders this year.  I always worried that a Monet project would look like a huge mess..... 

But I finally decided to take the risk and give it a try.  

I've been continuing with my mantra this year "embrace the mess"!  I wanted something fun, messy, and multi-dimensional.

We started by talking all about Monet.  We talked about France, his gardens, and how he was an Impressionist painter.  The kids were really interested in our discussion about light. How light changes at different times of the day, month, and year.

Finger painting!!! That's right, I really wanted to make a mess.  The first day we painted the background with our fingers.  Each table had a tray with dark blue, green, teal, and purple.  We started with green first.  I showed them how to paint different areas and leave other areas white. We wanted to make it look like the water was moving. After that we continued to fill up the paper adding colors and blending them together.  I made sure to tell them to use two or three fingers when finger painting, not their entire hand or arm.  After the background was painted we added blotches of yellow with white in the center.  

We were all a hot mess after painting the background.  I had buckets of water in the sink for kids to wash in.

The second day we added our lily pads and flowers.  We talked about how our eyes like odd numbers better than even numbers.  We cut out different shapes for our lily pads.  The kids were big fans of the pac-man shape lily pad.  After that we used oil pastels to add veins.  

Finally, it was time to add flowers.  The kids loved this part too.  We used pink and yellow tissue paper for our colors.  I showed them how to use the tissue paper on the back of the pencil and stick it down.  They could cut the edges to add texture.

Once they finished their papers I had them create a group project.  They laid their papers so they were all touching.  They could put them in any direction they wanted to.  We sat around their papers and pretended we were in Monet's garden looking at a pond of water lilies.  They talked about what they liked,what they would have done differently, where they thought the light was hitting our pond, where they saw movement. It was a great discussion and way to end our project.  It was hard to pull them away from their pond at the end of class.  The kids and I both loved how this project could be enjoyed as individual art or put together to become one large piece.