I couldn't help but take a picture of this (mind you, it's not my best picture ;) ) but in my first kindergarten class today, there were three little girls wearing a similar outfit as me today! It was totally unplanned and really cool!
We were all wearing black and grey striped shirts and some sort of pink!
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Last year when I made my requisitions, I decided to try out washable paint versus the regular permanent paint available through my Boces requisition. I ordered washable Crayola tempera paint and washable Prang watercolor paint through Dick Blick. I read that a lot of people don't like the quality of the washables paints, but here's what I think so far of the two types of paints.
So far, I don't really notice a difference between the Crayola washable and tempera paints. They do seem a little bit thinner, but with my younger students, that doesn't really seem to be a problem! I like to use acrylic paint more with big and important 5th and 6th grade projects anyways.
The watercolor paint, on the other hand, is a different story. I'm thinking I may have to try Crayola's washable watercolors, but so far I'm not very impressed with Prang's washable watercolors. They are very sticky and mushy in the palettes to begin with, before students add the water to them. Today was the first day kindergarten used the watercolors and they were sticking they're brushes very hard into the paint and it was moving and mushing around, very unlike the permanent Crayola watercolors I've been using.
I decided to try making the switch to washable paint because no matter how hard I tried, students were getting paint all over themselves when wearing art smocks. Between trying to clean up and just being messy painters, I couldn't find a way to solve this problem. So far, it seems like my feet at the sink seem to be helping the clean up chaos at the sinks, but I'm not convinced those messy painters will automatically get neater any time soon. I think next year I will stick with the washable Crayola tempera and will buy a half an order of washable Crayola watercolors to try out. Otherwise, I think I may have to stick with the permanent watercolor paint.
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Today my 1st graders started their last rainbow project for the unit. We did not review the order of the colors in the rainbow...I am using this project as the culminating project to see who really learned and knows the order of the rainbow. Today we painted the background of our final collage...I asked the students to fill the page with rainbow stripes. Next class, they will paint a series of circles using the rainbow. I am basing this lesson off one I found on Pinterest at Georgetown Elementary Blog. The teacher used tempera paint for the project, but I am trying the watercolor paints. I think for the circles I will have the students use colored construction paper to cut out various sizes of circles to glue onto their painting in the style of Kandinsky. Since it's kindergarten, I think I'm going to pass out difference sizes of circle tracers and ask them to try different sizes of circles onto construction paper scraps to cut out and layer. I don't want to get into that much tempera paint with this age group yet!
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Today my 5th graders created a paper plate color wheel using the primary colors. I finally found a good use for those huge egg cartons that a fellow teacher has stocked me with! Makes for a great tool for mixing colors with easy clean up...Next class students will create a simple symbol that represents themselves and then paint it in the primary, secondary and tertiary colors. They will then create an advanced color wheel out of that. More pictures to come as we work on that project!
Two of my three kindergarten classes finished their primary line paintings today. I'm not sure how happy I am with them. Usually I just have them paint primary lines and that's it, but I found a post on pinterest of a slightly different version another teacher uses. The picture below is the version from the blog Fine Lines. I really like this!
Here is my version that I am having the kids do:
Instead of painting the lines in black and then painting in all the negative space with the primary colors, I had my kids paint their lines in primary colors (which is how I've treated this project the past two years). I really loved how the teacher incorporated the silver paper, so I wanted to try adding it to my project. I just don't think it stands out as well if you don't use the black lines. Also, my kids seemed to struggle with painting a wide variety of lines in a neat manner this year. I will have more pictures as of tomorrow. Today, my drying rack was stacked to the top with paintings and collages, so I wasn't able to snap any pictures of completed projects.
