(masterpieces) Mixing Colors

(teacher's note) The Prekindergarten class is learning to mix colors. During the first week, students painted with red, yellow, and blue to fill in the shapes created by pre-painted black lines. For the second week, they mixed those primary colors, two at a time, to create a new color: orange, green, or purple. Natalie did an excellent job mixing colors and painting her shapes.

Don't paint!

I'm doing this new (for me) choice-based art education with my PreK, K, and 1st grade classes. There are multiple centers each class (usually three, since I have three tables). After an introduction, the students can choose which table they want to work at and what they want to make.

PreK has had the painting center for a while now. There are only 6 PreK students. Even if they ALL want to paint, it's feasible.

The first few weeks, their color options were limited to two primary colors. We explored color mixing and made observations. Paint phased out for a few weeks, but has been back since the beginning of January. Amazingly, some kids would rather cut shapes and collage or make a paper weaving rather than paint!

Today, as one boy was painting with red, yellow, and blue, he rediscovered orange. I asked him how did you get orange? Red and yellow!

At this time, I was sitting next to a little weaver. This weaver is so creative and full of personality. He also happens to live in the same stairwell in my apartment building, so I see him a lot.

Not to be outdone by the maker of orange, the weaver posed a simple question.

"(Orange-maker), how do you make white?"

Pause. Orange-maker is a little stumped here. To be honest, I wasn't sure of the answer. White and black are the only other colors of paint I'll give to my youngsters. You don't mix white paint. It comes from the bottle. What is the little weaver trying to say? How do you make white? Don't worry. He didn't leave us in suspense for long.

"Don't paint!"

(Do you get it? Leave the paper plain, with no paint, then it will be white!) I nearly spit my hot chocolate out all over the table! Flat out cracking up! This 5 year old made a hilarious art joke! I'm not sure the maker of orange understood the joke, or anyone else in the room, but it made my day.


Later in class, my little weaver decided to weave two rows with the same color strips as his paper loom. It was a trick, you see. After class, I would look at it and think he didn't finish, but he really did! How tricky!



In other news, I was almost a real teacher today! I had four elementary classes, a double-period of AP art history, and afterschool activities computer art. On top of that, my colleague was sick, so the art TA was busy substituting in secondary art classes most of the day.

I painted with 11 first graders with no TA!

I'd been reluctant to introduce the painting center to first grade because I was afraid they would ALL want to paint. I decided today that I would just select 4 that could paint. The rest would have to settle on a different center.

After establishing the tools we would need to paint (paint, paper, paintbrush, paint plate, water, spongebob) and demonstrating how to clean the brush, I asked who wanted to paint. All but 1. Ugg. How to pick just 4 students?

Suddenly, I realized I was better off letting the whole class paint. I gave the other boy the option again to pick painting. He just really wanted to draw. Ok. He sat at one table and drew while the other 11 students got painting supplies.

It took a few minutes to get every student every item, but I love recruiting the kids to help. They love to pass things out, and I like them to be responsible for things in my room. I also don't mind if they have to wait a little bit. They are not the center of the world. It's ok to learn patience.

At the end of class, clean-up went quite smoothly! I've established a clean-up system with 4th grade that works well for my room and resources. We implimented a modified version and managed to clean everything up, wash the tables, get out our art portfolios, document our center choice for the day, put away our portfolios, and collect our art shirts by the normal dismissal time.

About 10 minutes later, I'd washed the brushes and paint trays, packed up my things from the office, and was on my way down to the computer lab.

Overall, a successful day.


My Head of Department jokingly asked if I was preparing to move back to the states, teaching so many classes in one day, and without a TA. Only a joke, folks. I'm looking to be here at least 2-4 more years, and hopefully updating this more than twice a year...

Drawings by PreK and Kindergarten

Back in August and September, my third graders drew portraits of their classmates. These were quick drawings, done using a template for facial placement, and modifying the template for the individual features. They drew in pencil first, and then colored it in with crayons. Over a few class periods, each student made about 5 drawings, and we stapled them together into a book. Two slices, above the eyes and below the nose, allowed three parts of the page to turn independently. We made some interesting combinations by only turning some of the parts...

So why am I mentioning this now? Well, the standard crayons created a problem when it came to skin color. The kids dug through all the old crayons to find three peach crayons. Other students used orange, yellow, brown . . . I decided I needed to get the Crayola Multicultural Crayons for next year.

I was able to order the crayons at the end of December. They arrived in early February. It was only a matter of time before I decided to use them. I broke them out one morning for the PreK class. We talked about the word family and what people we might draw in a picture of our family. One little girl really wanted to draw Kim Marie, the teacher's baby girl, but refused to draw her baby brother.

The part I was most curious about was skin choice. Each table had the standard eight colors intermixed with the 8 multicultural colors (six shades of brown, plus a white and black).

Some kids completely disregarded the skin colors and made their family purple, green, blue, etc.

Other kids carefully picked a shade of brown, usually on the lighter end.

Tony was funny. He drew his family members naked first, coloring them in completely with a skin color. When that was finished, he drew clothes on top of them with the standard eight colors.

Another girl cracked me up! Jessica's dad is Caucasian and her mom is Chinese. She and her sister both have black hair, but a lighter skin color than their mother(without the yellow undertones). She used black for hair and peach for skin when drawing herself, her mom, and her sister. When it came to her dad, she drew him using all yellow. Yellow skin, yellow hair. (He does have dirty blonde hair.)

Here are some of the drawings from PreK. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of Jessica's drawing.

The top right picture is Tony's, with clothing added afterwards. Underneath that picture, everyone in Isabel's family has VERY long legs! If you notice the names on those pictures, you might be confused. Rony? Rsabel? The class was learning about the letter R and practicing what their name would sound like if it started with the letter R.


















This week, I did the same activity with my kindergarteners. The families are great, but it was the drawings after the families that ended up being the most interesting!




I think Jerry's drawing of his family became the inspiration for the later drawings by the boys at his table.

I asked him about koa. What does this say? Korea. That was a duh moment for me. Of course. About 2/3 of our students are Korean.

The mention of Korea seemed to inspire Ted, another Korean boy.






World geography might not be the best subject for our kinders. Not surprisingly, Korea is huge! Even our middle schoolers have been known to let out a gasp when they see the actual size of Korea on a map.

I'm not sure about all the countries, but the first three on Ted's map were Korea, China (the C as the top) and India (the i at the top). Japan was added, along with more Korean islands and USA.






The Indian boy sitting between the two Korean boys decided to draw a globe as well. You can see that India grew in size a little in Swayam's map. It's also daytime in this world.

Jerry also joined the globe action for his free draw. Now each table had two sets of the standard eight colors and two packs of the multicultural colors. While the other boys were coloring their oceans (and using the only two blue crayons at the table), Jerry said "I need blue! Is there blue? Oh I have yellow!" and proceeded to color his ocean yellow.



As one of the other teacher's mentioned, we do live on the Yellow Sea (but it's not yellow).

Let's look at the countries on this world. Of course, there's large Korea and many Korean islands. We also have a J for Japan. As he was drawing, he said "oh, Merica!" and labeled an island with an M. Later, he added a U on another island for United States. At the top, there's this u/C thing. Maybe that's China. I forgot to ask about that.

What happened to India? Just check out the moon on the left, and you'll find two circles labelled I. I think the rocket may be in flight to India.





At another table, a European boy, William, drew an airplane for the hundredth time in art class. Whether drawing, painting, or making collages, he makes an airplane once or twice a month. He's quite good at drawing them. You can see all the people inside the plane as it lands. Our kids, being expats in China, are frequent travelers.

Other students began drawing ships, particularly pirate ships. Perhaps this is because the local expat group put on the pantomime Robinson Crusoe just a few weekends ago. Joseph asked me how to spell Robinson Crusoe. I honestly didn't know. I have to look it up every time!

(Side note: Having recently devoted a lot of time to learning pinyin, the Chinese phonetic system, I have a terrible time sounding out long words when I'm trying to remember how to spell them! I was actually trying to spell Crusoe a few weeks ago and couldn't for the life of me figure out the last two letters! The long O sound in Chinese is spelled "ou" always, no exceptions. And the oe combination doesn't exist in pinyin, which might be one reason why I didn't think of it. Just now, I had to google it again and get the correct spelling from "did you mean robinson crusoe?")


Here are some more pirates!


















I love that the two boats on the right are waving the Korean flag! It shows up a lot in my students' artwork. Remember Christmas Tree Korea--made by Jerry's older brother, Fred.

(Did anyone notice Fred's name in Jerry's picture? I let Jerry sound out his brother's name. f is clearly spelled fa. Then an r, which looks more like a v, and a d. Missing the e and the awkward r makes his brother's name look more like Favd, not Fred!)

Back to the pirate ships, I can't figure out what happened with the two on the left. I don't think they were made by the same student. Why would one student redraw the same picture? They don't have names on them, but here's my guess. I think one girl was "inspired" by the pirate ship of the boy on her right, which is how they both ended up with nearly identical pictures.

Inspiration, a topic for a later post!

Painting!

This morning, my principal asked about my work load.

Is is too much? You're teaching PreK-5th grade.

I found the question quite timely. Just last night, I told my mom that I'll never be able to teach in the States.

What are you trying to tell me? she asked.

I reassured her that these almost two months had not turned me into a life-er, as they're called. For now, I'm here, and since I'm here, my energy is focused on here. Decisions about my life after June 2010 will come later.

But this is what I was saying...

I am SO SPOILED (or spoilt, as the Brits would spell it).

Let me reiterate, if you don't remember, my "full load" involves teaching 13 classes a week. Those 13 classes, each has a class size of 7-15 students! On top of all of this, Mrs. Greene and I work with the art teaching assistant, a local Chinese woman who has been at the school for 4 years. She is in the classroom for most of my classes, providing another set of adult hands, along with helping purchase and prep materials.

Yesterday, I painted with 9 first grade students during the last period of the day. We had about 15 minutes between classes. It was just enough time for me and Mrs. Yang to set up 9 painting stations, fully equiped with water, paper towels, two paintbrushes, a 15x20 sheet of paper, and a palette with red, yellow, blue, and white paint.

Side note: My students were so excited to paint this week that one student brought paintbrushes from home! Waiting to come into the room in the hallway outside the classroom, another student commented "but she only has 7 paintbrushes!" I assured him that I had paintbrushes too, and every student would get a paintbrush, even if she didn't have enough for everyone in class...

At the end of class, I took the students to the bathroom next to my classroom to wash hands. (My classroom sink isn't classroom friendly.) When I came back to the classroom, clean-up was well underway.

Paintings were on the drying rack.
Tables were wiped down.
Water buckets were rinsed out and drying.
Palettes and brushes were collected, and she was cleaning them all in the classroom sink.

At the end of the day, I painted with an entire class of 1st graders, all class period, and did not wash out a SINGLE paintbrush.

Painting is typically a labourous undertaking for an art teacher.

It's quite easy at my school. Mrs. Yang and I, we have it covered.

I am so thankful, and my students will truly reap the rewards. They LOVE painting!


Today, I painted with 7 PreK students. It was the second week in a row of painting for them. You should see the learning! Given limited paint options (teacher-planned, of course), they make such discoveries...

Last week, each student had one cup of paint---the color of the table where they sit. Then, they worked with a friend from another table with a different primary color. I moved their seats around so we had one red-yellow pairing, one yellow-blue pairing, and one blue-red pairing. (One student was absent, so we had six students exactly.) Each group had one long sheet of paper. They took turns making dots on the paper in a line. As their classroom teacher told me, they were working on basic sequencing. Every other made a nice alternating pattern along the paper.

Next, I gave each pair a palette. Each person was supposed to put some of their color on the palette, then MIX IT TOGETHER!

Nevermind the fact that their classroom teacher had already taught them about green, orange, and purple. They even predicted what color would happen when each combination was mixed, still, actually mixing the colors on their palette...

IT WAS MAGIC.

You should have been there. There's no way to put into words the excitement of a four year old when they first mix together blue and yellow and see that it really does make green!

They were blown away. For the remainder of the class, each student painted their own 15x20 sheet of paper using their color and the color of their friend. We had trains, flowers, faces, birds, and a student who just covered the entire surface, systematically, from corner to corner, with yellow-orange paint. The great thing is, the large sized paintbrushes combined with their developing fine motor skills meant that most of the objects just looked like blobs of paint! But they were trains and flowers, faces and birds.

This week, I wanted to build on those experiences. I knew their teacher recently introduced them to the color white. This would allow for new mixing opportunities...

When the students came into class, their places were all ready except for paintbrushes. This was my attempt to stop them from painting until I gave my intro.

It didn't work. Two students just put their hands directly into the palette of white paint.

After brief encounters with paper towels, we were ready to get started.

What color is your paint today. White! And what color is your paper? White! Oh no. How is that going to work? White paint on white paper? What should we do? We need another color! Good idea! Everyone can pick ONE color to add to their palette.

Last week, we mixed colors with our friends. What will happen if we mix our color and white?

No one knew, so we needed to try it!

Another amazing moment, as students around the room found light blue, light yellow, and pink. Gasps, literally gasps, and huge smiles.

So adding white makes a color lighter...

And pink, as I explained, is a special name we use to talk about light red.

My intention was to have them paint with those two colors---white and the color they chose. One student requested another color. I decided two primaries and white would be fine. There's no chance of all-brown paintings with just two primaries.

I let each student pick a second primary color. The color mixing that ensued was so fun! Look for some PreK paintings to be posted in the future...

I was thinking tonight, at this point in time, seven years ago, I wanted to be a preschool teacher. I was just starting high school and wasn't serious about art. I didn't sign up for Art 1, only the ceramics elective.

I still love teaching PreK. I am so glad their class got added to my workload. But I love the other grades too. Surprisingly, I even loved my high schoolers at Fleetwood and my middleschool and highschoolers at Stoke Damerel. I hope to have more interaction with secondary students at our school as time goes on and the program develops.

I love kids of all ages, and I love teaching. But teaching art is definitely a blast! I wouldn't want to trade it for any other subject...just look at the faces of my first graders as they line up outside of the art room, eager to come in and start painting!

I see the other first grade class tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to see their excitement!

One Full Week!

This week was the first FULL WEEK with students.

Five student days.

I'd like to say it was nothing, didn't wear me out or anything.

In all honesty, I was so excited for Friday to finally come! And then, just in time for the weekend, some sort of bug knocked me out COMPLETELY on Saturday. All day Saturday...I'll spare you the details.

Thankfully, I started feeling better this morning, so I had all day to sleep, start to eat, and regain my strength for ANOTHER FIVE DAY WEEK! But I did miss having a weekend, where I could do things for myself...

Check out the picture below! I came in last Monday to find a BRAND NEW CEILING AND LIGHTING in my art room. I was told that they would be putting in new lights, but I didn't realize the lights and drop ceiling would come at the same time. I don't have much of an opinion about the ceiling. It looks nice, and that extra 2 or 3 feet would never have been used. This is supposed to help with heating and cooling costs, and now I have better lighting!



















Probably the biggest news for this week is that I'm teaching the Pre-K class! Once a week, for 30 minutes. It's a small little class of 7 students. One girl cried hysterically about coming to art class. Thankfully, one of the classroom teachers stayed and sat with her. About 5 or 10 minutes into class, she finally stopped crying.

It's a fun class, especially since I have four of my colleagues' children as students. Two of the boys' dads work in the secondary building. One little girl's dad is a music teacher and the head of fine arts. And another little boy, his dad is my principal, the principal of the elementary school.

Pre-K was learning about colors in their class. We practiced our cutting skills by playing "HIDE AND SEEK" and finding the colors that were hiding in magazines.

The yellow table cut out yellow items.
The red table cut out red items.
The blue table cut out blue items.

Then a teacher helped each table glue their bits onto construction paper. The classroom teacher that stayed helped the yellow table, my TA helped the red table, and I helped the blue table.

My principal's son was sitting at the blue table. At one point in time, I thought he said "I like you." Then I realized, he was probably saying "I like blue" since he was sitting at the blue table and cutting out blue items. A few minutes later, I was helping him cut out some more items. This time, it was clear as day. "I like you." Yes, this little four year old boy likes me.

He also likes my scissors. They spring open to help young children with their fine motor skills...

He saw me two days later, on Friday, pointed at me and told the person he was with "I like her."



















Here are the finished Olympic bulletin boards---designed and created by the 5th grade classes.

I'm so impressed.

Nearly everything is their own creation. I stapled the items on the board, with their direction. I also created the flag of South Africa on the first bulletin board. (It's fairly complicated, and the students were struggling, but since our secondary principal is from South Africa, I thought I'd help them out!)

I love the way the first bulletin board combined the Olympic rings and the word "Olympics." Genius.

And check out the finished torches on the second bulletin board...those torches are the result of rulers, protractors, "paper and pencil" math calculations, mental math, and research at home! (One boy from the group printed out color images of the torches at home and brought them in for the second class so they could get all the details perfect.)





































Lastly, some finished hand designs from the 2nd graders and the 2nd/3rd grade ESL class.









This girl really impressed me. The front of her book is beautiful. She finished early, so she began designing the back. I didn't ask the students to think about the arrangement of hands on the front cover, but merely to overlap the hands to cover the entire page. She took this to the next level when she designed her back cover. It's things like this back cover that make you smile and realize your students are learning, applying their understanding independently, taking risks, and finding success!


































I read this passage in The Art of Teaching Art to Children on Friday night:

Sometimes the art room gets really quiet. It's the tip-0ff that the kids are deeply involved. I haven't asked the children to be quiet. They are simply expressing their involvement in the work by a high level of intensity, combined with a deep focus. They are immersed in the art materials and in themselves.

I started tearing up. Already, there have been many quiet classes in the art room. I love to facilitate this type of involvement in art, in the process of creation!


Sometime, I need to write about 3rd grade. They're awesome! The discussions we have about art, their increasing drawing skills, and the crazy portraits they're drawing of their classmates...it's a great time!