Fall Color Theory

I love art! I am always so sad that we usually only DO art and hardly ever get to LEARN art. So this year I made a point to start the year with color theory.

We began very simple with primary colors and secondary colors. We read some great books that tell about the different kinds of colors.

We also watched a couple of YouTube clips as well.

This next one is my personal favorite. We watch and sing along  to it about three times a week :)

But, I admit I have a soft spot for OK GO... I mean, have you seen their treadmill music video for Here It Goes Again? Look it up. It's awesome!

Anyway...

We just finished learning about color mixing this last week and with some inspiration from here and here, I came up with our Color Mixing Fall Basket.

The students were given plates with the three primary colors. They also had fruit patterns (two apples and a pumpkin) and two paintbrushes!

First we washed the pumpkin in yellow paint. Then we dipped, just the tip of our paint brushes into the red and did a second wash over the pumpkin! And like MAGIC it became orange!

You should have heard all of the OOHHS and AAHHS! First graders are amazing :)

After we painted our apples, we switched brushes and began work on our leaves. We started with another wash of yellow and then dipped our brush into the blue and did a wash over, one last time.

Color mixing by doing a wash is MUCH, MUCH easier than having them mix the colors on their plate.

When all of the paint was dry, we cut out our pieces,  assembled them into our baskets and added some detail with a black crayon (basket lines, leaf detail, pumpkin lines). I also had them curl a green pipe cleaner for the pumpkin vine and tie a bow of twine, that were hot glued on during lunch!

Our finished baskets! Boo... cell phone pic :( But you get the idea!

I can't wait till next week when we learn about warm /cool colors and monochromatic colors!

Spiders, Spider, Spiders!

This week was all spiders... creepy, crawly, spiders :) Take a look at what we did, we had so much fun!

We started out the week with our spider poem/ finger-play: My Spider. I love this poem and so do the kids, since their hands get to be the spider crawling all around.

click to download

We read all about spiders in non-fiction format. My fave is Are You a Spider? by Tudor Humphries. The kids loved this book and it led us to compare ourselves with spiders.We did a venn diagram to share similarities and differences. I forgot to take a pic of the whole class version, DARN! But, it wasn't anything fancy, just on the white board. Then the kids filled out this one...

click to print!

Later we put all of our spider knowledge into a circle map to get us started on our spider writing.

I actually make a rough version on the white board with ALL of their ideas first, but for writing I narrow it down to some of the more specific details and add pictures to help my ELs.

The original circle map that we did as a whole class... so messy.. AHH!

In math we had some spidery fun too! The kids loved measuring in non-standard spider units with some plastic spiders that I got at the Dollar Tree. They actually started out as spider rings, but I snipped the ring part off, and tad-ah! Spiders to measure with. To download the measurement recording sheet click HERE!

They also did a web sums sort. Taking number sentences on spider and fly cards and matching them to the correct web.

We did a graphing activity with the story Miss Spider's Tea Party. First we voted weather or not we would have tea with Miss Spider if we were insects.They wrote their yes/no onto little tea cups.

ok, ok... I know she's a little creepy, but it sorta looks like the book's illustrations... right?

After we read through the story, we talked about why the insects changed their minds about Miss Spider and if anyone in the class who said "No Thanks!" before the story, would now have tea with her... of course they all would! We also had to discuss how the story is fiction, because as a few of mine were quick to point out, a real spider would have eaten the hurt moth...

Then we analyzed the graph. We have been working on reading graphs, interpreting data, and tallying, so this worked out perfectly. I wish I had gotten a pic of a kids, but we did it whole class so they looked about the same.

click to download

 And finally we finished up the week with a fun art project I got from Kacey over at doodlebugsteaching. It is a silly spider and is really, just so cute!

Okay, that was a lot..... so many spider things, so little time :) Have a happy weekend!

October Fun!

I wanted to share two activities that we will be doing in the next few weeks. That way, if you are in need of a little something extra, these are at your fingertips!

To brush up on alphabetical order, October style, we will be putting each set of three cards into ABC order and recording them!

Click to download!

And for some math... we will be pairing witches and goblins together by solving the number sentences and looking for the related facts.

Click to download!

 Have fun and check back for some spider fun this week!

October Quilt

We made it to the weekend... yea!

One of my favorite things we do each month is our literature quilt. My intention is to do this every month beginning when school starts, but we never seem to get a handle on it till October.. you know how that goes. So needless to say, we completed our first quilt on Friday.

I choose Spookley the Square Pumpkin as our October book (about a pumpkin different from the rest that will end up saving the day... great for touching on problem solving, hard work, diversity, and rhyming...seriously a cute story... check it out). We responded by answering the question: How would you stop the pumpkins from rolling out of the patch?

I was really surprised by some of their great answers! Catching it with a net, building a wall, asking people for help, mend the fence...those smart firsties  :)

And I can't do anything without a corresponding art project, so that's where the quilt comes in. A tissue paper and starch pumpkin with a pipe cleaner vine. The kids had so much fun with this! I love doing art mediums they have never done before.

"I will make a wall. The wall will be strong."

And our finished bulletin board...

crooked... grrr

Do you make a classroom quilt? Try it out if you don't... it is a great change of pace from the everyday reading program and a fun filled art project to go along! Happy October!

Happy Friday!

Well it is officially fall and I was expecting boots and sweaters to be entering my wardrobe rotation... but, I don't believe that will do in this 90 degree weather! Maybe with some wishing this weekend we can at least get the temperature down to 70... I mean really it that too much to ask for!

So even if mother nature isn't quite ready to celebrate just yet, I have begun to bask in the glory of fall and the anticipation of all things October...spiders, bats, scarecrows, pumpkins and so much more! To get me started I put together this sums matching math activity to go with my week on spiders. The kiddos sort the spiders and flies and match them to the correct web...isn't that simple :) Feel free to enjoy this activity along with us!

Check back soon to see how our weather unit gets going! Have a happy weekend!