Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Warm and Cool with Watercolors (and the butterflies take flight!)

 
Today we finished our symmetrical butterflies! The kids had a chance to color their butterflies with markers and add antennae if they choose. What amazed me was that without any prompting or reminders, the kids added color to their butterflies in a symmetrical manner with colors matching on each side. They also bent the antennae into various matching symmetrically sound shapes. Whether this was due to the lesson on symmetry or whether the kids have a natural awareness of the necessity and "rightness" of a symmetrical design when creating butterfly, I can't be sure! But either way the kids "knew" what they were doing and the butterflies came out beautifully!

These lovely butterflies are floating outside of the Bearville and Poohville classrooms!

 For the other half of class we did a casual exploration and review of warm and cool colors. The kids were supplied with some small pieces of watercolor paper, white oil pastels and watercolor paints. We spent some time as a class reviewing and discussing which colors are warm and cool. Some are quite easy and obvious (red, orange yellow are generally quite warm) but others like a red/purple or a yellow/green can be "in between" colors that can lean either way.


The kids used their oil pastels to paint some abstract designs and shapes onto their paper. Then they chose to paint with either warm or cool colors. After the kids mastered  "all cool" or "all warm" paintings, they were free to move on and explore painting with both warm and cool colors. It was exciting to watch how delighted they were as the white oil pastel designs appeared.



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