Victor Vasarely for Second Grade

One of the concepts we learn about for the first marking period in second grade is the difference between geometric shapes and organic shapes. For the geometric shape portion of our curriculum we have Victor Vasarely as a required artist.  As it turns out everyone in town at the elementary level all had a print of Zebegen.

So, it got nominated for the job of teaching the kids about geometric shapes.  I'm not a huge fan of this particular Vasarely, but hey, what are you going to do?  One of my colleagues in the department came up with this easy way of creating in a style reminiscent of Zebegen.

We started with a 6 x 12 piece of construction paper - any color is fine, I just happened to use my bright green because I had a ton of it!

I cut one inch strips of paper in four other colors. 1/2" strips in yet another four colors were cut as well.  Students took one of every color, plus a glue stick, and scissors.  I demonstrated how to cut the strips into squares.  We then created a checkerboard pattern with the squares from the one inch strips.  The shapes inside were made from the half inch strips.  Most students opted to keep the inside shapes as squares although some did get adventurous and tried triangles or circles.

Here's some of the works in progress:

For some finished examples you can check out my school's Artsonia Galeries Here:
Vasarely School #1
Vasarely School #2