In the Art Room: A Color Mixing Unit

You wanna make a whole buncha kids excited, happy and edu-ma-cated all at once? Celebrate the end of a color mixing unit with a Color Mixing Cookie Party! My kindergarten through second grade have been immersed in all sorts of color theory. We've read books, watched videos, learned songs and, of course, painted. Today I thought I'd share with you a couple ways we've been studying color!

My kindergarten friends were introduced to color with the Ellen Stoll Walsh book Mouse Paint! I love this book for a coupla reasons: it's short, to the point and full of great visuals. After that quick read, we did a lil mouse drawing of our own!

In this video, I'll show you how to draw the three mice from the book. And how to mix those primaries into secondaries. I created the video in such a way that you could share it with your students so they could draw along with me.

When I do directed drawing with the kids, they sit on the floor with clipboards, oil pastels and 9" X 12" paper. Because the drawing is repetitive, it doesn't take long for the kids to finish their three mice.

From there, we review the colors mixed in the book. We talk about creating small puddles so that we can still see our cute mice. 

 Once these masterpieces are complete, the kids will paint on 12" X 18" pieces of paper, folded in quarters, all of the secondary colors. These papers will be used for a colorful self-portrait that I'll share with you soon...although, if you follow me here, you've already seen preview! 

These have been my favorite videos to share with the kids on color mixing and color theory. I love when the kids watch and sing along. These videos have been a fabulous addition to my art teacherin' repertoire! 

Being a big ole They Might Be Giants fan from way back, I love playing their tunes in my art room. 

And this series of videos on the Elements of Art have been great to share with the kids before start our sketching at the start of class. 

My students have been working on a behavior incentive where we can earn parties for good behavior. You can read more about that here if you wanna. Well, when they earned parties (and they all eventually will), I wanted to keep it fun and educational...so we had a Color Mixing Cookie Party to celebrate our awesomeness and the end of our color mixing unit.

Here's a lil video for y'all to walk you thru the supplies you'll need and just how easy this activity is.

I happened to have a million popsicle sticks so these worked perfectly as our icing mixers!

 So much deliciousness!

If you decide to do this, just a coupla reminders:

ALWAYS check with your school nurse for allergies! We don't want to chance any child getting sick.

Do this at the END of art class because these kids will be JACKED up on sugar. Thankfully for me, my kids go to P.E. after art...so they were able to burn off all that extra energy. 

And remind the kids how awesome the party is! I like to tell em, "if you thought THAT was fun, just wait until the next party you earn". Nothing like a good bribe for good behavior.

Have ya'll done this in your art room? What spin did you put on it? I'd love to hear details, ya'll!