Extra- Blooming Beauties (finger painting project)

Our projects for the month of March are all Spring/Easter themed. This is an extra project. I got this idea from a picture on Pinterest.

Category: Spring/Easter

What you will need:

-green paper
-white, light pink, dark pink paint (tempera or acrylic)
-black marker
-newspaper (to spread out on the table underneath the project)

Time 45 minutes approx

Prep: Draw or trace a tree using the black marker on the green paper.

• Reviewed with the kids the Easter Colors we were using and the 3 parts of a shadow. There's a light tone, a middle tone, and a dark tone.
  
  
• We used 3 colors, to avoid mixing paints I assigned each different color to a different finger.
  
  Pointer finger: is White, the brightest part of a shadow in shading. There's also a song called "This Little Light of Mine." This is the bright light.
  Middle finger: is the Middle Tone.
  Ring finger: is the Dark Finger.
  
  While we didn't use shading in this piece, if you ever wanted to do a finger painting involving shading this would be a clear and easy method to teach to the kids until they are older.
  

• Finger painting the trees I let them have at it. I told them no straight lines and don't cover the hold page. Stay on or around the branches. Imagine you're painting a beautiful pink and puffy and round cloud. I showed them lots of pictures of trees in bloom so that they could see for themselves what they were trying to paint. Some of them went with Cherry Blossoms while others looked more like Apple Tree Blossoms. We did White, Light Pink, Dark Pink.
  
  
• Then all they had to do was sign their names!

Overall: Fun. Easy. Time will depend on the level your kids are at.

Related blog posts:

-Easter Colors
-Easter Lilies (out of Egg Cartons)
-Tri Toned Cube

(logging 1 1/2 hours for prep and execution)

Art Curriculum- Week 3- Tri Toned Cube

Week 3- Tri Toned Cube

Last week's lesson involved 1 Point Perspective. To view it click here.

Artistic Movement: Renaissance

What you'll need:
-tempera/craft paint
-printing size paper (I used copy paper, but the kind you use is up to you)

Time: 20 minutes approximately

The purpose of this lesson was to try to teach the kids about light and shadows. An early start on shading and explaining what a "light source" is.

I allowed the kids the ability to choose their own color but only offered red, blue, and yellow (I used this as an opportunity to have them recall the primary colors to me).

In the picture below you can see the gray scale picture I printed. I showed it to them and pointed out the really bright side, the extra dark side, and the in between side and tried to explain what caused the different shades of color.

What I did as a coloring sheet for the kids: I looked up Tri colored cubes and searched until I found a coloring sheet in the shape I wanted and printed off multiple copies of it.

When each child has his/her color, I had them color the top diamond on it's side.

Then I gave them each white, and helped them carefully mix the blue and the white to create a lighter hue.

In a similar manner I gave them black to achieve the darker shade. They only need a tiny dab of black.

Overall: This was a very easy project to prep and took very little time. The kids (depending on the age group) will probably need help figuring out which portion of the cube is left or right. :)

Related Posts:

-Week 2- 1 Point Perspective
-Week 1- Gridding

-Creating an Art Curriculum

(logging 1/2 hour for prep and execution)