Claude Monet Water Lily Craft

Description:

For this activity we learned about Claude Monet and his famous Water Lily collection. We started with looking at some of his pieces and compared and contrasted them. We then started with our 'water' background with watercolor paint, watercolor paper, and salt. We used green, blue, and purple to create a water looking background and then used salt to create more texture. After we finished the background we set them aside to dry while we worked on creating our flower and lily pad. To create the flower and lily pad we needed a green construction paper with a triangle cut out to make it look more realistic, a white circle of paper, and a 1-inch thick pink strip of paper. We started by making veining on the green paper and added shading also. Next, we drew our flower on the white paper and cut it out. To make the petals curl we used pencils and wrapped the petals around it. Finally, to make the pink part of the flower we shaded half of the paper orange to give it more dimension and cut it half way all the way across. To spiral it we just used our fingers and wrapped it up. To finish the project we glued the pink part onto the middle of the flower and glued the flower to the lily pad and then glued the lily pad to the water background.

Extension Activity:

For an extension activity, students can create a "Monet Nature Journal" where they observe a natural setting, such as the school garden, a park, or even a small patch of grass, and sketch what they see using crayons or colored pencils. After sketching, students can write a few sentences describing the colors they used, how the light changed what they saw, and how their artwork is similar to or different from Monet’s. This activity deepens their connection to nature and helps them apply impressionist techniques in a personal way.