End of the year: 3rd grade

3rd graders worked on a 12x12 geometric painting during the last few weeks of school. I still needed to cover tints and shades and found this a perfect way to do so. Plus, it really worked well in getting the kids to focus and discover color mixing since we were still in testing mode. I found it to be therapeutic for them to work this way, plus they had fun mixing and making as many colors as possible! Students traced about 7 shapes from my box of teacher-made shape tracers (Did I mention before how much I love peanut butter lids for circles? They are perfect!). Then I asked them to dissect the paper using a ruler from one edge to another, at any angle, about three times. All pencil lines were traced with black crayon and off they went to paint! I kept six large egg cartons stocked with paint (one for each table) inside a Tupperware lidded container over the weeks so I didn't have to keep preparing them from scratch. That was a nice trick I discovered and will continue to use. Students used pieces of white scrap paper for their palettes. 

 

A couple of groups had some extra time, so we talked about Aboriginal art and how it's based on circles and dots which fit right in with our geometric theme. I made a handout of Aboriginal art so they could view many, examples. The kids were given those same egg cartons full of paint and a piece of 12x18 paper and asked to paint about 5 small dots scattered onto the surface and then build them out to "pack" the paper. I gave a demonstration and showed a variety of ways to build the painting, making sure to emphasize that my way is never the only way. It was really neat to see the kids get into a thinking trance as they worked!