Kindergarten: Alma Thomas Paper Collages

February is black history month, so what a great time to highlight some of our African American artists. Alma Woodsey Thomas is a wonderful painter who is known for her large colorful paintings. Here are the ones I looked at with the kindergarten classes.

It is amazing the way that some of these students looked at these paintings. Some described the radial ones like "looking down a well", or the stripped ones as roads. I loved hearing all the wonderful comments and inputs the students had. Although these paintings are done using quick brush strokes, when I first saw them they looked like collages of ripped paper to me, so when I created them with the students, we tried using tiny ripped color paper instead of paint. The students had the choice between the radial design (circles), or stripes.