I am loving the SmartBoard in my classroom this year. It arrived just before the students arrived in late August (I mean minutes before) and I am finding ways to incorporate it into my daily lessons.
Recently, my students created simple monochromatic still life watercolors using the 5 zones of light. Now they are exploring the complements on the color wheel by looking at the light and dark arrangement in the still life pictured. It was so useful for them to see the still life and the color wheel together, to make visual comparisons as we conversed about what color the pitcher is, and the bowl, and the background. We talked about the complementary colors and how to use them to neutralize color. It was fun to take the painting image I found, break it into simple shapes along the divisions between light and dark, and to challenge them to reproduce the color. As you can see from their preliminary results, they are getting the idea of creating greenish browns, yellow browns, etc. When we meet after their break, we will finish these paintings by pushing the darks darker. I have a few color matching exercises I'm going to teach them. Thanks for looking!
A few weeks ago, one of the art teachers at school sent out an e-mail asking for any interest in tempera paint pans that her kindergarteners couldn't use anymore because the white was gone. Woot! I was thrilled to have them for the art class I teach a couple of times each week. We don't need white, and are using the paints as transparent watercolor. In fact, the lids of the paint pans are great mixing trays. My students are always dismayed when I tell them they can't use black. "What will we do?" We had a great conversation about the color wheel, and whether you want to make a blue black, yellow black, etc. We're getting there, and I'm always interested to see what they see.
"Painting You Painting Me" is a little study I did across the table from one of my girls as she concentrated on the objects in front of her. Fun!
