Rainbows and Dots

I'm trying some new projects this year with Kinder and First grade, and my whole first quarter is devoted to abstract art because it offers so much room for exploration. My Kinders have been learning their colors, so I decided to do a rainbow project. First we read "The Mixed up Chameleon" by Eric Carle, where a chameleon goes to the zoo and wishes to have qualities of each animal. We focused on the rainbow of colors the animals showed us and learned how primary colors mix to make secondaries. On the first painting day I had them ONLY paint a wide yellow arc in the center of their paper, because we needed to learn painting procedure. Limiting color really helped. On the second day we painted red and blue stripes over the yellow for orange and green, extended the red and blue to the edges of the pages, and then added a little more red at the bottom for purple. For the most part the kids did a great job following directions. Although it's interesting to see how some kids did not use the whole page or just mixed all their colors to brown!

 I sent a paper bag and a note home to parents for "homework" asking them to help their children do a color scavenger hunt to find 2 things of each color that could be used in a collage. I suggested bottle caps and magazine pages, but got back a whole lot more!! On the third day of our project, students pulled out their objects and tried to match them to their rainbows and glue them down. I have jars of glue and brushes for them to paint the glue. In the picture above I was totally blown away when the child finished her collage and proceeded to TURN ON LED LIGHTS ON THE CARS!!!! Whoah!

 For kids who didn't bring back their bags or who didn't want to sacrifice their objects for art, I had boxes of construction paper scraps leftover from my 3rd grade mask collages for students to collage onto their rainbows. I actually love the mosaic effect some students achieved as they collaged the scraps. If I do this project again next year I might just stick with art room materials. The bags and homework were a bit of a hassle for the kindergarten teachers to deal with, and some objects that came in were not ideal for the project (hello tennis ball). I had to go back and hot glue some items back onto the collages because elmers wasn't strong enough for all the plastic stuff kids brought in. Live and learn.

 With my first grade, I wanted them to have a more careful painting and color mixing day. so I jumped on the bandwagon and read "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds. the kids loved the story, and went right to work filling up their pages with beautiful dots. Then,like the boy at the end of the story we experimented with different kinds of lines on top of and around the dots.

 I've hung these all together, and they are just so beautiful- bright, expressive, joyful, exuberant. I find it amazing how young children have a natural sense of composition. What happens to that when they get to second grade?

 This lesson is definitely a keeper. I'm in love with this painting:

"Make a mark and see where it takes you!"