Hands and More Hands!

Two of my absolute favorite things to teach are Warm/Cool Colors and RAINBOWS! Rainbow Order. Both of these concepts are fundamental and come up a lot in the aesthetic world and in future projects throughout K-12 Art Education.

1st Grade

Kindergarten

For Kindergarten we did Rainbow Order. My absolute favorite way to introduce this is with this video!

It will get stuck in your head for WEEKS! The only negative with it is that I don't include pink when I teach rainbow order but the kids seem okay with it. They still ask me (as we are on our 2nd project after this one) to play it!

For 1st grade we continue talking about Warm and Cool Colors which we touched on a little bit with our blob monsters. I tried a new activity with this concept and it worked great. I gave each student in the class a different color square of paper as they walked in and had them go to the side of the room they thought they belonged (either warm side or cool side). I saw them helping each other and working together to figure it out. Then before I laid out the paper we were using for the project I acted like I didn't know what pile they belonged in and had them tell me if it was warm or cool. (My Superintendent observed this lesson but unfortunately he didn't come in till after the activity was finished which really bummed me out because it went so well!)

With both K & 1 we talked about types of lines too and where we see them in the world around us or where we use them in art. This was to create the background for their hands. 1st grade had to use the opposite color set of what they chose for their hands. So, if warm hands, cool lines, vice versa. Kindergarteners had to do lines in rainbow order since I didn't have them glue their hands in rainbow order (even though some of my favorite examples did!).

Lastly, this was a great project for developing fine motor skills. It was a lot of tracing and cutting for little ones and there was a lot of help but they worked hard and all seemed to love the final product!

I thought there was a pin on pinterest once upon a time that inspired this project but I can't seem to find it!

***UPDATE!***
Found the pinterest post!

Jefferson Elementary...

Kennedy Elementary...

One Kindergarten class had some extra time so we colored these awesome giant rainbows on the floor together!

McDill Elementary...