Only three more post assessments to go... Today I had two kindergarten classes who started my color unit. In kindergarten I teach students the primary and secondary colors. Today they learned what a primary color is and what happens when you mix the primary colors. Today's lesson, "Mixing Colors," is by far one of my favorite lessons to do with the kinders! They are always so amazed at the "magic" that happens when you mix the primary colors together. At the end of the day, I always receive at least two or three comments from other teachers who talk about how amazed the kids are by the project when they get back to their rooms! First we talk about the primary colors and listen to Greg Percy's song, "The Red Yellow Blues." Then I pass out my mixing colors worksheet. Everyone writes their names on the paper somewhere and then one at a time, we work on finding the primary color words. I have the students point to red first and then I pass out red model magic clay, giving each student a small ball of it. The students are asked to take a small piece of the clay and stick it to the box under the word. Then we do the same for yellow and blue. After that, I have the students split up their leftover clay into two balls. Before I let the students mix red and yellow, I ask them to guess what color they think it will make, and so on and so forth with the other two secondary colors. I always love hearing them oooh and ahhh over this! I included a line over the box where they put the secondary color to write the color word. I only use this if we have extra time at the end of class. Most of my kindergartners take FOREVER when it comes to writing something like their name this early in the year, so I use this as a time stretcher if needed. One of the proud students at the end of class! This project always requires my whole attention so I wasn't able to get any pictures during the actual process of mixing colors today. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I also had one class of first graders today, and we started my rainbow unit. Every year I do this just a little bit different because there are just soooooo many project ideas for rainbows! Today, we started off with a smartboard rainbow sorting game and we listed to Greg Percy's song, "Roy G. Biv." Then I had the students color a rainbow bracelet so they will always remember. During my lunch period (because I never have a lunch period where all I do is eat...I'm sure many of you can relate!), I laminated their bracelets, cut them out, and added some velcro so they will be easy on, easy off for the kids. Here is one of the bracelets they colored on my wrist....you can see the little velcro circles I stuck to the band. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here are some finished projects from my first two days of the extended day program. Our school received a grant to do fun, but educational, after school activities until 4:30. The students receive about 35 minutes of homework time before choosing one of three activities. It's always a pretty rough decision for the kids to make and I have been working on some fun art activities for them to participate in during the year. I usually have to compete with a cooking project (which the kids LOVE) or an outdoors activity. For my first project, we did gyotaku prints on black paper with metallic/fluorescent paint details. This one is my example I was working on with the kids....I'll hold onto it to use later when I do another similar project to demonstrate painting the seaweed and such.