Exploring 3-D with my students has been an incredible process. Just as each child draws or paints uniquely they see three dimensional space differently. I started this week’s class with simple building blocks. I scored an entire shoe box worth at a yard sale a year ago and had them tucked away in a closet waiting for their ultimate purpose .
Rainbow colored blocks offer a lot in the way of color recognition and conversation. We built cities, forts, towers, tunnels, and houses. We celebrated tall stacks and laughed when they fell.
My 18M – 3Y classes explored clay. I created a beach theme complete with dried kelp pods, driftwood, shells, and rocks.
We added tempera paint (blue, green, turquoise and white), water, wacky tools (garlic press, butter slicer, wooden meat mallet), and traditional clay tools.
My 3-7Y classes learned about the color wheel. We practiced mixing colors and I introduced the concept of analogous color. We started off the lesson with a wonderful book called, “White Rabbit’s Color Book”
Each child was given a photo copy of a blank color wheel. We described each section as a slice of the pie or slice of cake. We then “frosted” our slices with different colors.
Along with color mixing we practiced washing off our brushes and patting them dry on paper towels. This was the most formal lesson I’ve done yet. There was a lot process and focus involved but the kids stuck with it and learned a lot!
Last but not least we made brown! I love how this student used her hands to mix.
I think these color wheels were a wonderful accomplishment!
After learning about the entire wheel we decorated our paper mache bowls with glitter watercolor. We applied red, yellow, and magenta inside the bowl with droppers.
Painting the inside and outside of a sphere was a great challenge and fascinating to watch.
We used cool analogous colors of lime, green, turquoise on the outside. We applied the paint with an oversize brush. One parent came up with the brilliant technique of covering the colors that we weren’t using with tinfoil. This helped students to focus on one side of the color wheel.
I mod podged the bowls to give them one more layer or vibrancy. Here are a few 100% complete.
