This fun color mixing art activity is perfect for kids in grades 2 and up. Originally, I created this project to celebrate our "100th Day of School", but kids will enjoy doing this anytime! Your students will gain valuable color mixing experience while creating a frame-worthy piece of art. The example above was created by a 2nd grader in a 50-minute art class. These … [Read more...]
5 Reasons Why You Only Need 3 Tempera Colors for Your K-5 Students
Shopping for tempera paint can make you feel like a kid in a candy store! How can you resist filling your basket with all those juicy colors?? When you're in the market for paint for your elementary classroom or homeschool, you really only need 3 colors of tempera to provide a great learning experience for your students, and you'll simplify your life at the same … [Read more...]
Blossoming “Popcorn Trees”
Spring has sprung, and to celebrate, our Kinders painted trees blossoming with flowers made of popcorn! This lesson reinforces the color mixing skills we've been working on all year, as well as teaches a basic technique for drawing/painting trees. Adding popcorn also gives the opportunity to talk about the concept of "mixed media". And who doesn't love … [Read more...]
How to Mix More Interesting Greens
Green is a color that students often take for granted. When painting greens, many kids will default to just using the green in their paint set. This results in paintings that lack depth and interest. With some basic color mixing instruction, kids can paint a variety of greens and greatly improve their paintings at the same time! Follow these steps to mix more interesting … [Read more...]
Kandinsky for Kinders
I love this color mixing lesson inspired by Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky! Kandinsky was an accomplished musician as well as an artist, so it's fun to play music while the students are working. You can do variations of this lesson for just about any grade level. Here is what I do for Kindergarten and 1st grade.... perfect for allowing students to experiment and just have … [Read more...]
Cityscapes with Tints and Shades
Our Kinders are becoming experts at color mixing! This time we added white to make tints and black to make shades as we created these sweet "candy-colored" cities!Materials:9x12 white heavyweight construction paperpencilTempera paint - red, yellow, turquoise, white and blackPaper plates for palettesbrushes and waterVocabulary:Tint - any color plus whiteShade - any color plus … [Read more...]
Valentine Color Mixing
You can mix a "tint" of any color just by adding white to it. Painting with tints lends itself well to Valentine projects, like this colorful card made from a 12"x18" painting folded in half.1. First, place a "quarter-size" amount of red, yellow and turquoise tempera paint on a paper plate. (I like to use "turquoise" rather than "blue", because it's closer to "cyan", or "true … [Read more...]
Color Mixing with Kindergarten
I love how K's will intuitively paint a line of blue across the top of the paper for the sky because the sky is above them! (They usually need to be taught to make the sky touch the ground. I save that lesson for later!) ~ Flowers by Gabriel I like to start off our first color mixing lesson in Kindergarten by reading the story, "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh. Then, … [Read more...]
Rorschach Creatures
This is a favorite lesson I do with Kindergarten every fall. They love the surprise of opening their papers to reveal colorful designs and the fun of using their imaginations to "discover" unique creatures! I do this lesson in two parts, to give the paint time to dry before adding details with marker.1. Fold a piece of 12 x 18 white construction paper in half. Then open it … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Color Wheel
Nothing teaches you as much about color mixing as creating your own color wheel! Here's some helpful vocabulary and directions for creating a color wheel of your own: Primary colors - red, yellow and blue (colors that cannot be created by mixing other colors) Secondary colors - orange, green and violet (colors that are created by mixing two primary colors … [Read more...]