So. According to the Walled Lake Consolidated School System, fifth graders should be learning about surrealism...and I couldn't agree more! To introduce the topic (without them knowing), I displayed this slide on the smartboard:
Followed by this slide:
The reason for the pass was this: to lose a little bit of control! I have always thought of surrealism as an impossible art, one that requires either Peyote or a restless mind. How wrong I was! Just one unexpected element will turn a formalist like myself (and like I assume some of my students must be) into a blossoming surrealist. After a 5-minute lecture on Surrealism and two of its leading figures (Dali and Magritte), the students came up with these beauties: