The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

As I was thinking about the title for this week's post, the movie titled The Good, The Bad and The Ugly came to mind. The good would represent the lesson I thought was incredible! (Just really happy with.) The bad would be the one I kind of have reservations about...... (The little ones had fun with it and did learn something.) AND since I really adore kid's art work- the ugly would be how messy the tables looked afterwards. (Which I neglected to photograph.)

The good: The lesson I'm working on with my 2nd to 5th students is all about lines, shapes, patterns and space.

I was given a tub filled with these wonderful foam shapes. My grandson helped me to load up a cardboard tray for each table. I also put out markers and gave students paper with 6 boxes on it to work out their patterns and have a reference sheet for themselves. 

 

 After a short discussion followed by my modeling with my Elmo (a document camera).

 Students got to play and plan out their designs.

 It was amazing to see how engaged the students became. They also did a great job cleaning up. We will use these sheets in some very interesting ways in the very near future! And of course I will blog about it!

The bad: The lesson with my kindergarten and first graders. I have seen the little rainbow umbrella person all over Pinterest and thought, "What a cute blending primary into secondary rainbow lesson."

 

 The book I read to students was A Rainbow of My Own by Don Freeman.

I however didn't want to do a full on paint lesson and decided to use these gel sticks from Faber-Castell. The gel sticks when applied to paper have a crayon like texture until you add water with a paint brush and smooth out the texture. A really cool effect! This seemed so quick and easy that I didn't even bother with paint trays........ mistake #1.

Mistake #2 not making sure that the little kindergarten students understood that my tracers are NOT part of their art......

Mistake #3 was using paint brushes that were too big-in other words could hold way too much water and flood their project......

I managed to correct all mistakes by the second day and I did enjoy listening as the children were blending their colors. Soooo if my learning objective was for students to understand how to use primary colors to make secondary colors - then this was a good lesson. 

 

 

And while they may seem to all look alike, they really do have their own personality. My reservation is that I would really like to see students do something else to make them a little more unique, but I'm at a loss. All suggestions gratefully appreciated!! I'm thinking students could fill in the background.....

And like I first wrote, the ugly was the mess. Which was no big deal........ it is an elementary art room after all.

I would love to hear about your good, bad and ugly experiences!

Thanks for reading!  

Please share, I'm real close to 50,000 page views and this blog is having a 2nd birthday next month!