Mondrian- Shapes And Color In Kindergarten

Mondrian Inspired!
Do you need a way to introduce some basic color and shape vocabulary to your kindergarten students?

Piet Mondrian's art work may just be  the inspiration you need. Here's a lesson they may work with your littlest artist.

After showing the kids some visuals of Mondrian's art work, we start discussing the colors used in his paintings. This is where we start talking his use of the Primary Colors- Red, Yellow and Blue.
After our color discussion we move on to talking about the shapes that Mondrian used-  squares and rectangles.  The discussion mostly revolves around the  characteristics  of geometric shapes- straight edges and angles.
Then it is on to the project itself. 

The project starts with the kids  drawing a simple fish. Next they  draw in vertical and horizontal lines on the fish, dividing it into square and rectangle shapes. The shapes are then randomly colored in  red, yellow and blue colors. Keep reminding them to leave some shapes white.

After they are done coloring, the fish is cut out and glued onto a black background.

Next we move onto the collage step. The kids are given strips of red yellow and blue strips of colored paper. They cut off small squares and rectangles. And glue them around the edge of the black background creating a frame for  the fish,

Here are some finished projects. You can see this is a simple project that helps the kids understand some basic art vocabulary involving color and shape.

What do you think about these Mondrian inspired fish? Would you try these in your kindergarten art class? I'd love to hear about it?