mixing in spring:)

This week the kinders continued working with color and they got to mix primaries to make secondaries for the first time this year. I used an illustration by Adrienne Looman for this color exploration.

We spent a few minutes at the beginning of class identifying things the kids saw in the image- natural shapes, geometric shapes, and colors. I then talked about how you can take the primary colors and mix them together in different pairs to make new colors.

We drew out our composition lightly in pencil together. Near the end of this, I told students they could add elements to their drawing if they had big, empty spaces.

We started the coloring with yellow. I asked them to color 2 or 3 parts of each thing yellow, then they colored 1 or 2 parts red, followed by a part or 2 blue. We got mixing at that point. The kids got a kick out of seeing how the colors changed.

At the end of the lesson, I posted 3 sentences about color mixing that they could choose from for their exit sentence. We read them aloud together and they chose one to write.

naea is almost a week away!

Wow. The national conference taking place in San Diego is right around the corner! Anyone out there sign up for the tour of my school scheduled for Friday, March 28th from 10-12?

I'm expecting 25 people and I'm curious if I'll see any familiar faces that day:)

I guess I gotta clean up my mess of an art room;)

chilling at the pool.

The 3rd graders are identifying and creating movement in art this week. Like the kinders, they looked at the work of painter David Hockney for inspiration. We looked at a couple paintings from his LA pool paintings and identified that he created movement by using wavy lines and by using lines to create a splash.

We then drew out a pool shape together. After that, students were free to add any details they wanted to. Students colored everything except the water with color sticks. I reminded them about using light and dark to make things look more real like we did on their lego mini fig selfies from a few weeks ago. Many students added some realism by doing this on things in their drawings.

When it came to the water, students approached it with crayon resist. They pressed hard with white crayons to create the wavy motion lines and then painted the water and sky with cool color watercolors.

I started the week with a different composition in mind, but switched because I felt the overhead point of view was a bit too challenging for them.

 Hello Kitty makes everything better;)

 Yikes!

raining with david.

This week the kinders are learning to identify cool colors in art. I'm sharing a painting by British artist David Hockney with them.

When I share the painting with them, students identify the rain, puddles, and oval shapes. I then show them my example and we identify the 3 cool colors. We also notice that the lines in my example are white.

When we draw out the ovals I tell the kids to press as softly as they can with their pencils. We add more ovals to each puddle, identifying them as small, medium, and big. Then we switch over to our white crayons and trace the lines, but this time we press as hard as we can, so the crayon lines will resist the watercolor later. Broken white line patterns are added for raindrops as well.

I demonstrate the painting before passing out brushes to the classes. When they see the white lines appear as I pull my cool colors across the paper many of the kids get pretty stoked. It's art magic:)

Students are free to apply the colors wherever they want to their rain scene. Once they are done painting, they complete a sentence that tells the reader what they created in class. This is a little different than their previous sentences because they are writing the whole sentence for me and not tracing a frame and filling in a couple blanks. I put up a list of words used in the lesson that they can use. I also provide a sample sentence for them to see. I'm looking forward to seeing how their sentence reflections grow as we head into our 3rd marking period.

arts and crafts around the world.

A couple weeks ago we put on another one of our family art nights, Arts and Crafts Around the World. Teachers and support staff led 10 different activities for students and families that were inspired by the wide variety of cultures we have in our school community.

It was a lot of fun participating in as a teacher. It's always wonderful to see our students working with members of their families to create in a low stress setting.

Below are just a few photos from the evening:)

 I hosted Chinese shadow puppets in my room. I want to do more of this!

 textile patterns from all over the world

 Filipino 3d jeepneys

 

One of our 5th grade teachers and her quilting association shared their gorgeous works with our school community too:)