Building Klimt

First Grade students looked at artwork by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. They noticed that he often painted with gold paint and used swirly lines, black and white rectangles and different colored circles. Students read "The Magical Tree" by Myriam Ouyessad, which is a fictional story explaining a couple of Klimt's most famous artworks. Students listened carefully to specific directions such as, “draw flowers at the bottom of your page that have green stems and pink and purple flowers. Draw brown swirls above these flowers.” Students discovered that everyone’s artwork turned out differently even though each student was following the same directions.