Color Wheels (1st & 2nd)

Below are color wheels made with 1st and 2nd grade classes. They are simple but effective! After they cut and arrange tissue paper squares to make their color wheel, students group the primary and secondary colors in the center. This helps me check for comprehension, and it also helps my visual learners keep the primaries and secondaries straight!

Red Dots (2nd-5th)

This is a simple lesson that I do to introduce students to positive and negative space and to begin talking about composition. Students cut a circle out of construction paper and then, starting with the circle in the center of the black square, move it around until they are happy with their composition. The only rule is that some part of the circle must go beyond at least one edge of the square (no boring "smack in the middle" compositions).

We talk about balance, space (positive/negative), and discuss what makes a good composition. Once students glue their circles to the black square and trim the edges, those sharing a table arrange their "Red Dots" into a larger group abstract piece. (My students sit four to a table.)

Any shape can be used (geometric or organic), and the older the students the more complex you can make the challenge. (Ex. Use two or three circles of different sizes and observe the changes in negative space as you move the shapes around the black background.)

Some of our red dots arranged into an abstract composition.

Positive & Negative Space (2nd grade)

Kindergarten Rainbows

All ages LOVE color mixing with water and food coloring! I always begin with red, yellow and blue, leaving a jar of clear water between the primaries. Kindergarten students were particularly awed when secondary colors "magically" appeared as we mixed the primary colors. Inspired by our color mixing, young artists then drew their own rainbow art! (I snapped a couple of photos before sending them home...)

Wouldn't it be nice if unicorns really did climb rainbows?

Such bright, happy flowers!

Family portrait with rainbow. :)

Winter Oil Pastels (3rd-5th)

Broward Education Foundation held a holiday card contest in November, so I took the opportunity to introduce students to oil pastels and the beautiful contrast that can be achieved by applying them to black construction paper. One of our entries won third place in the elementary division!

I do get frustrated with the number of contests that are pushed our way, and as often as I can I try to turn the contests into lessons. Aside from being a terrific introduction to oil pastels, our card designs offered excellent opportunities to discuss contrast, composition, horizon line, foreground/background/middle ground, shape, positive/negative space, and texture. Students were encouraged to let the black of the construction paper become part of their art by allowing it to show through in lines and other areas of black.

Below are just a few of our submissions. (I apologize for the quality of the images. I didn't have time to scan these before submitting them, and the only camera I had was my phone. Where I've been able to remember which students made a drawing, I've added first names.) 

Artist: Midsi, 3rd Place Winner - Broward Education Foundation Holiday Card Contest

Artist: Declan

(Seriously...what's more fun than snowboarding penguins??)

Artist: Joseph

Aritst: Evangelina

Artist: Miquel

Mixing Secondary and Tertiary Colors!

Color mixing with water and food coloring has got to be one of the most enjoyable classes for both the students and me. It really is magical to see the colors appear and change. Following this lesson, students create their own color wheels.

Primary, secondary and tertiary colored water. (The blues and violets look black due to lighting.)

With Kindergarten, I simply mix the primaries (red, yellow, blue) to create the secondary colors (orange, green, purple). With first and second grades, I go through the same steps, but then we talk about warm and cool colors and complimentary colors. I let them help add drops of color to the water, as well. There's a lot of discussion and hypothesis building involved in our experiments. Once a color is mixed everyone decides together if it's acceptable or if it needs to be adjusted. If a color needs to be adjusted students offer suggestions, so everyone is involved in the problem-solving process. At the end of the lesson, I open up for questions, and it never fails that someone wants to know what happens when you mix all of the colors (or a warm and a cool or two complimentaries). So before emptying our jars, we find out!  Students are amazed to discover that compliments mix to create varying shades of brown, and they soon realize that no matter how we mix the primaries and secondaries, all we're really doing is combining the primaries in varying quantities.

With third through fifth grades, we take color mixing to the next level and mix tertiary colors. I go through basically the same steps as with younger classes and add review of the basics. Some of my 3rd-5th students have never had an art class, so this is the first time they've considered how we achieve a wide range of colors in art. Older students then create tertiary color wheels, using colored pencils to mix their secondary and tertiary colors.

It took me a try or two to figure out the best way to move from secondaries to tertiaries, so here's my trick:

• Start with six jars of water (red, clear, yellow, clear, blue, clear). 
• After mixing the secondaries, place a jar of clear water between each of the six colors, with one at the end (red, clear, orange, clear, yellow, clear, green, clear, blue, clear, purple/violet, clear) for a total of 12 jars. 
• I show students a color wheel and explain that the last jar is really between red and violet, but for the purposes of our demonstration, so they can see all of the colors, our jars are arranged in a line.
• Next, mix secondaries in the clear jars (the two jars on either side of orange should be orange, on either side of green should be green, on either side of violet should be violet). 
• The color line should now be: red, orange, orange, orange, yellow, green, green, green, blue, violet, violet, violet.
• I explain to students that tertiaries are made when we mix secondaries and primaries, so by beginning with secondary colors all we have to do is add the appropriate primary to achieve the tertiary color.
• I draw students' attention to the first clear jar of water, between red and orange, and ask students if they can hypothesize what this color will be. (red-orange) I then ask how we will create this color. (by adding red - I have a student add one drop of red, then we assess our result and add more if needed). Tip: Keep a cup of clear water handy to "water down" the yellow colors if needed...yellow is easily overpowered by the other colors, so starting with a diluted orange and green is helpful in achieving yellow-orange and yellow-green.
• I continue to do this down the line, letting students give me the name of the color before we mix it. They soon realize that each tertiary name is comprised of the primary and secondary color that are used to make it, with the primary name coming first. (blue + green = blue-green, yellow + orange = yellow-orange, etc.).
• Allowing students to make hypotheses during the experiment and letting them make the adjustments to the colors is key to helping them understand how each color is achieved (and how they can, then, achieve even more color variations by altering the amount of the primary/secondary in each color).

I'm going to need a cape...

Color-mixing secondaries and tertiaries this week in 3rd-5th...Today, a student told me that she helped her mom solve a cake decorating catastrophe last night thanks to what she learned about color mixing in my class. Am I saving the world? No. Am I saving 15 year-olds across south Florida from the devastating indignity of muddy-colored Quinceañera cakes? Heck yes.