DESCRIPTION: Students look for patterns on each other's clothes, create their own patterns, and apply their knowledge to the artworks around them.

OBJECTIVES: Students learn the meaning and varieties of pattern, the role it plays in conveying meaning, and analyze how it works with the other elements. The activity is also intended to encourage students to use their imagination as they explore artworks.

PROCEDURE: Who has a pattern in their clothes? Look for repeated lines, colors, or shapes. If you do stand up. If your pattern is made of repeated lines step forward. It it is repeated color step forward. If it is repeated shapes step forward. If you have a regular pattern on you step forward. If you have an irregular pattern on you step forward.

Now let's do something a little different. Here are a variety of colored cutout geometric shapes. (Split the students into two groups and give each student one shape.) I want this group to create a regular pattern and this group to create an irregular pattern. Now take a look around you. Do you see any patterns in any of the artworks in this gallery? How are they similar to the patterns on your clothes or that you made? Do you see any differences in the patterns in the artwork and those that you have already discovered? Let's see what other patterns we can discover in art.

MINNESOTA GRADUATION STANDARDS:
(1) Read, View, Listen
(2) Write and Speak
(3) Literature and the Arts

Age level: Appropriate for grades 2-5.
Artworks used: Use paintings or sculptures that show recognizable patterns.
Props needed: Cards of colored geometric shapes.
Related to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: No
Notes: Be sure, as you discuss patterns, to relate it with a discussion of other elements. Analyze it's relationship to the other elements.


© 1998 WALKER ART CENTER