Monochromatic Ice Cream Cones: Finished

In the last two days of 5th grade art class, we've gotten geared up to do our Van Gogh paintings.  First, we had to finish putting together our monochromatic ice cream cones and talk about color in art.

After all the cones were put together, I put one of each color up on the board and we talked about each cone as a big group.  What happens to yellow and orange when you add black?  What kinds of hues of red do you get? Etc..etc...

Today, we read the short article in the September issue of Scholastic Arts about Picasso's Old Guitarist.  This is where we were able to get into talking about color and mood.  I asked each student to write the color they will use on the back of their canvas and fill out the ice cream rubric and color theory/Van Gogh review questions.  Next class we tackle painting the background/sky and ground in our artworks!

Here is my rubric for this project.  I must say that while I was worried at the beginning of the year about this group performing at an 80% or more on their final assessment (this is one of my SLO groups), I'm feeling much better about their performance now!  Creating an entire 5th grade curriculum around color theory is so easy to build upon and reinforce the previously learned information...