Misadventures of a first time mum: Mondrian for beginners

I have been trying to think of ways of introducing artists into my little one's life. This is as much as a way of keeping me inspired with new ideas as anything. I have discovered a new found love of installation art at galleries. But have decided that the abstract artists are a good starting point for home, again really as this gives me a bit of a framework to begin to play with colours and shapes.

The first artist I have tried is Mondrian.

Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue 1935

He seemed good, his bold pictures introduce primary colours as well as squares and rectangles (yes I know my little one is way too little- but the activities were just fun exploratory ones but I got to make a nice book!).

I had a whole bundle of felt that I had bought for a previous madcap scheme that fell by the wayside, so I thought I would make Mondrian inspired fuzzy felt.

Here my little man again showed his enthusiasm for dismantling, but did have a go at splatting bits of felt at the board.

So then I decided that the lightbox would be fun too. Now, here is where I made a very irritating mistake, so primary colours hey? So that would be red, blue, yellow and um green! Anyway you can still see the effect, just bits of acetate cut into different shapes with strips of black card.

As all the shapes are squares and rectangles I thought building blocks could be used to further explore this theme. But I wasn't sure how to do it. Decided to paint some junk boxes and thought the toddler could help. Lots of mess! Anyway I turned boxes inside out and we had fun slapping some paint on. He had most fun tasting the paint and then doing some hand prints.

Then I finished them off when he was asleep. Sticking them back together and painting the black lines on.

He did some stacking, with a little bit of help from his friends.

But the build'em up knock'em down still proved a fave.

I thought I would indulge his penchant for getting in stuff too.

So as I said I decided to make a book, I found lots of Mondrian images and interspersed them with my photos. I added labels for colour and shape to some of them and wrote a very short introduction to the artist. Then, to find a front cover. I was very proud of myself at finding a picture to use on the front, added my title and smugly sent a photo to my husband. At no point had I registered Piet Mondrian's resemblance to any other famous historical figure (yes I must have been blind or very self absorbed) but this was quickly pointed out to me. Any ideas who?