Art Parent Giggles

My 3yr old is going to be a green crayon for Halloween.  This fills me with glee as an Art teacher.

Sometimes it's not about what's easiest for you.

It has taken me a few years to realize that maybe the way I'm separating and storing my oil pastels isn't the easiest on the kiddos.
I inherited these nifty three sectioned containers when I started teaching at my school and they are perfect for storing since they stack without a lot of the container in each other (so things don't get smooshed or stuck to the container on top).

I had been separating them into warm colors, cool colors, and neutral colors in order to keep the colors from getting too icky.  Each section had it's own yogurt cup that the oil pastels went in, that way over flow would be trapped in the bottom container or the cup could be taken out and passed around the table.

As you can see the kids can't put colors back in the section they came from.

While this seemed to be a good idea to me, the kids aren't too nice to my yogurt cups.  I took them out and now the containers are just going to hold the oil pastels and the container will have to travel around the table.

New and semi improved, still needs labels.

I'm still going to separate the warms, cools, and neutrals and I'm gong to tape little pieces of color paper to the edges to show/label what colors go in that section.  That should solve the issue of getting the colors back with their family.

You know it's windy when...

...this happens.

That's the shade structure on our kindergarten playground flapping in the breeze.

One Mouse, Two Mouse, Red Mouse, Blue Mouse.

First grade is working with the story Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh for their color wheels.  (Another Pinterest project.  I love Pinterest, don't you?  I need to stay off it).
It's always fun to read the little guys a story, it's a nice break.

We're using the primary colors (Red, Yellow, Blue) for day one, only to ensure that we finish.  We've pushed it to the limit of the time we have together, so it's a good thing it's only three colors.
So far, so good.  Except we're using A LOT of primary color paint.  I know we're safe, I bought plenty, but it's still scary to be throwing an empty bottle away, it seems, every other day.  But when every grade is painting, that's the way it is...right?

I have these laid out on two of my tables to dry, there are primary colors EVERYWHERE.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm in a circus tent.

Next up is color mixing to make the secondary colors!

2nd Grade is Singin' in the Rain(bow)

Second grade is getting probably the most traditional looking color wheel out of all of them.  It's a seven color (primary, secondary and a neutral) wheel, that looks like...well...a wheel.  The kids all say it looks like a beach ball, which is pretty close, but they're going to be umbrellas.  Again, another Pinterest project.

We did all the painting and color mixing stuff first to make our color wheel umbrellas.

I think this is mine, actually.

This rotation is drawing and coloring our figures.  I'm throwing the kids for a loop with this since they're not full figures, it's just the bottom half of the raincoat, legs and boots.

I love the patterns and individuality the kids put into their art.

I think we'll figure it out when everything is together, hopefully.

Getting Colorful with Chameleons

The first major project is Color Theory and Color Wheels.  The little guys (kinder to 2nd grade) are making traditional color wheels, the big kids (3rd to 5th grade) are doing non-traditional ones.  It's really because I don't want to make six a day for a month...doesn't sound fun to me.
I'm basing 3rd Grade off something that people do with their kinder/1st graders.  I don't really feel bad about  this, I know my students and this is up their alley.  Sometimes I get jealous looking at other Elementary Art teachers' blog and the drawing abilities of their younger grades and wish my students' work looked like.  Then I remember that my kids are where they are supposed to be developmentally, for the most part, and it's okay.
We're making Color Chameleons (this was the jumping off point).  Again, so far so good.  We spent day one drawing them and Tuesday we'll start painting.  I found a step by step how to draw sheet that's helping quite a bit, the kids get so focused on erasing the tiniest oops that they fall behind.  The sheet helps them to catch up.  Some get ahead and some are just tracing the final one.  Oh well, they'll just find that the tiny ones are hard to paint.  The lines are to help remind them that we have six colors to squish on our chameleons, to give them all room and to maybe help with some tertiary color mixing (which is something I don't have to teach them).

I've got some pretty talented kids.
Yes, it's a floating chameleon, that threw the kids for a loop, too.
It's because the branch is a separate paper and step.
I told them they could draw one, if they wanted, it just wasn't coming with their chameleon.

We painted in our Color Chameleons this rotation.  The kids really enjoy painting, sometimes too much.
I'm giving them two choices on how to paint them in.  We can use either Rainbow Order (ROY G. BV) or we can use Color Wheel Order (mine starts with Yellow, 'cause that's what's on top).  All the classes wanted to use Rainbow.  Not a problem, rainbow order rules my room, so it's all good.

Poor little chameleon, no violet :0(

I love this one's head, it gives it a GREAT expression!

Next time is a neutral branch and then assembly in two weeks.

Just Make ONE...and one more and one more...

We're working on Color Theory for our first project across the board in all grade levels.
Kindergarten is doing two projects, Rainbow Hands and a torn paper Color Wheel collage.
Rainbow Hands is another Pinterest project (I don't think this is what I had originally pinned, but it's the same thing.). I'm spreading it over two days. The first day is printing, the second should be cutting and gluing...yeah...So this is what day one is supposed to look like:

BIG teacher hands

These are the kindergartners:

I have no idea how she forgot yellow.  Other than that she followed directions.

Little kinder hands...not so much.  And direction following...not so much., but still okay

Okay, the first two aren't so bad.  You do have to understand that directions went a little like this:
"You're going to put ONE hand in the red paint, give it a good smoosh around (I put my hand in the paint, rub it around and show the kindergarteners)
and then make ONE red hand on your paper (holding up one finger)...ONE (holding up one finger)...How many (holding up one finger)?"
"ONE"
"What color? (showing them my hand)"
"Red"  (Which at the time was the only color they had)
"How many?"
"ONE!"
"And that's because we have more colors and hands to put on the paper."
I let them loose on the red.
And this is what I got from most:

I don't even know what to say...*sigh*

I'm re-thinking the project.  We're not going to cut and make a cute rainbow.  At least I know they were introduced to color mixing and had fun.  I'll hand back papers next time and we'll use them to help us color in an Art "math" problem and a rainbow, I guess.