When Kandinsky Meets Calder

I like to introduce Kandinsky to the kids in the beginning of the year. I show them how, despite the fact that he started very figuratively and later moved on to a complete abstract, he spent some time in between the two simply exploring the relationship between colors.

Painting circles within circles and by doing so practicing mixing colors is found to be very relaxing yet a fun project to do. While coloring the circles we converse about which colors will look vibrant next to each other and which will kind of disappear or not pop out. We used acrylic colors and oil pastels on top. As always, I show images of the artist, I show my example (and then I take it away) and to the question "Do we have to draw circles?" I answer "You can do whatever you want, it doesn't need to be circles at all," and some kids chose to do other designs to explore color relationships. I'm totally all for it.
This year I decided to elaborate on these circles and turn them into mobiles. The idea came to me from a stash of jars' lids I've been collecting for some time. I also remembered that I'm the owner of some wonderful sheets of felts with handsome colors and I thought about putting these two together...

So, this is how we did it: The kids chose 4-6 lids in different sizes. Then they taped a fishing line to each of these lids. They used the lids to trace and cut different sizes of circles out of the felt and used white glue (later on I found that tacky glue works better) to glue them to the lids on both sides.
They also decorated cardboard rings (from a used up masking tape roll- I'm using lots of masking tape in our paper-mache projects) with washi tape and other tape. Lastly, we tied the strings to the ring.

They needed some help with tying. Some of them taped the fishing lines to the ring but I'm afraid it won't be as strong...
It turned out to be a great project as the kids loved making these and were very happy to take them home and hang them on their porch (If tied them in the right length, the lids could swish in the wind, bump into each other, and make a very pleasant sound). While discussing mobiles, it can also be a great opportunity to mention Alexander Calder. And there you have it - When Kandinsky meets Calder!