Color mixing with Kinders

Well, the school year is coming to and end in less than 30 days and my art students are feeling Spring Fever big time. I've decided to get out the paints for a color theory unit in hopes of keeping all of their busy minds focused and engaged. My kinder artists sure LOVE paint, let me tell you. Throughout the year I've periodically introduced brush techniques and paint management so that now they are ready to learn color theory. I begin with the Washington state standard of teaching them primary colors and secondary colors.

I begin by showing them the OK Go video shown on Sesame Street. The kids love it.

After this, I read them the book "Mouse Paint", by Ellen Stoll Walsh. I use the illustrations for inspiration for our color mixing art works.

I lead them through a guided drawing of the 3 mice and then we get to painting. I've used red, yellow, and blue paint as well as magenta, yellow, and cyan crayola paints in this lesson and I've found that the latter paints produce more vibrant color mixes. There is debate in the art education world whether red, yellow, and blue are not the true primary colors but magenta, yellow, and cyan should be taught instead. So, I introduce magenta as "red's sister" and that you can count her as a part of red's family. The kids get it.

As an extension of this lesson and another way for me to assess their understanding, I read them "Mister Seahorse", by Eric Carle.

I, again, lead them in a guided drawing as inspiration from the book's illustration and I demonstrated mixing colors. The kinders were instructed to paint the seahorses as they wished but must show the primary and secondary colors.

They were so excited to mix the colors and discovered that mixing all 3 primary colors can create brown. Who knew brown would be so exciting!?

Their excitement is what makes me think my job is the best. Kinder artists are so much fun.

Here is a shot of my room these days....a painting factory!

Thanks for stopping by!