self-portrait as a dot....

Every year on or around September 15th, teachers and students around the world celebrate International Dot Day. Based on Peter H. Reynolds' book The Dot, kids are encouraged to explore their creativity, starting from something as unpromising as a dot.

This usually coincides with my colour mixing unit in Grade One science. So one year I had my students paint themselves as dots.

First, I handed out paper dessert plates (sturdy ones). The kids painted them with one of the primary colours (red, blue or yellow) in a watercolour wash. Then they got to choose a second primary colour to mix with the first one by dropping it into the wet paint that was already on the plate.

The next day, I handed out pieces of acetate that had been cut to the right size for the plate. I gave the kids permanent black markers, and asked them to draw their own faces. Then I tacked the plates up  with the portraits in front of the wash they had made.

Lastly, I "connected the dots" with string when I put all the portraits up on a bulletin board. This became a provocation in exploring the meaning of "community," and specifically of our class as a community.

I think if I were to do this again, I would let the kids draw the lines between the dots with white chalk, to show and talk about how they are connected to each other. To map our classroom community. Maybe arrange the dots in a circle, to simplify it.

SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave

messy painting....

There is a time and a place to teach your little ones to rinse their paint brushes in between colours. I call it “painting like grown-ups.” I use a cardboard egg carton for each kid and put a small squirt of whatever colours they are using in each “cup.” They can use the lid or extra egg compartments to mix colours as they need to. And best of all, I can simply recycle the egg cartons when they are finished with them. All I have to clean up is the brushes.

This post, however, is not about one of those times!

Every September I get my grade one students to make an artwork involving dots on International Dot Day. Based on Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot, Dot Day celebrates creativity. (All you need is a starting place, and that might be as simple as a dot.)

So this year, I just put out the three primary colours (red, blue, yellow) as well as orange, green, and turquoise (I think). I asked the kids to paint one or more dots. I set up the paints in groups of four or five kids; with one brush per colour. I told them they didn’t need to wash their brushes between colours; the yellow brush would go back in the yellow, the blue in the blue, etc.

Of course that didn’t happen.

Inevitably, brushes got put back in the wrong colours, or got some other colours on them while the little artists were colour-mixing on their papers. And that’s where the magic happened.

The kids started making loose, lavish, juicy, uninhibited brush strokes — blue into green, yellow into orange, red into blue — and that’s how they should paint.

“Real” artists come in lots of shapes and sizes (so to speak), and some of them choose to paint flat areas of single colours with hard edges. But many enjoy and understand the value of not washing your brushes too often as you paint. Of not cleaning your palette. Of letting the colours blend and mingle and speak to each other.

I call it “messy painting.”

Just remember to stop before all of the colours turn to mud!


SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave

100 colours of children....

A record of our experiments in mixing "skin colours."

In my small grade one class, we have skin tones that cover the whole glorious visible spectrum of humanity.

But last spring I overheard a conversation amongst a small group of students in which it became clear that the concept of "skin colour" is more complicated than it seems. So when my order of "multicultural" markers, pencil crayons and wax crayons arrived a few weeks ago, I decided to let them become a "provocation" (in the Reggio Emilia sense) to my students; or at least a jumping-off point for an honest conversation about the many colours of people in our community and our world.

Hand drawings in various skin tones.

I distributed the drawing materials to the kids and asked them to show me one that is "skin-coloured." Most of them picked the palest peachy hue -- even the kids whose skin tones didn't match that colour in the slightest. Then I asked them to find the one in the bin that was closest to their own skin tone and hold it up for me. Again, some of the dark-skinned kids held up light-coloured selections. So we spent some time pulling out different options and holding them next to our skins to find the closest colour match for each child.

Experimentation charts. I painted the "mystery" colour
at the top of each page. Kids had 6 chances to match
it. Thanks to my awesome colleague Cassie Bensch
for sharing this strategy and this template. And to my
colleague Joanna Moen for the insight written on the
little chalkboard.

Then I showed them how to mix skin colours using tempera paint. The recipe includes white, red, yellow and blue -- in varying proportions for varying tones. I gave them the task of matching my skin colour, which I had earlier produced as the "Mystery Paint" sample. Periodically as they were experimenting, I called them over to paint a circle of their colour-in-progress on a grid of 100 circles. The challenge was to mix 100 different skin tones.

Kids' learnings.
Left: "You have to mix red, blue, yellow and white."
Right: "The primary [colours] can make a skin colour and rainbow
colours too."

Through a process of trial-and-error they each came to the closest approximation they could of my own colour. Then I challenged them to make it darker. Again the experimentation began.

Clockwise from left: Chauvet, El Castillo, La Cueava de las Manos,
Peche Merle.

Some of the oldest paintings in the world are of the maker's hands.

La Cueva de las Manos, Argentina.

Finally, we looked at early cave paintings of people's hands. Then the kids traced their own hands and painted them in with the first colour they had mixed, adding shadows around the edges with their darker shades.

Hands painted by the grade ones.

Hands I painted with the leftover paint the kids had mixed.
Wendy Stefansson

After the kids went home for the day, I used some of their leftover paint colours to paint a pair of hands of my own. Then I tried to document the learning that had gone on that afternoon on a bulletin board outside our class room.

This is how it turned out.

Bulletin board, a.k.a. the documentation of learning panel.