Snippety Gibbet: Set The Table - Food, Family and Abstraction

I'm always curious about how kids will respond to lessons on abstraction. So far, I've never had a child who was distressed about it. They seem to accept abstraction, though adults sometimes seem confused by it. My guess is that children accept it because they are educated about it. They see it as just another choice in art. You can make realistic art and you can make abstract art.

The "big idea" for our third graders is "culture." All of the lessons in our curriculum tie into that somehow and that connects to the curriculum in their classrooms.

This week I taught the lesson "Set the Table" from our county. The students, who are from many cultures, discussed what holidays their families celebrate with food. We looked at realistic and abstract works of art centered around celebration with food. The last work of art we looked at was a paper cut tomato by Matisse.

The children planned their work by making written lists and then made an abstract paper collage based on that.