Mixing it Up!

Making Rainbows with the glass beads

 I have been silent for too long.  I am sorry for that.  This winter has been long and hard for me.  The truth is I have been dealing with not only the loss of my dear friend Ms. Wendy but also most recently my most favourite uncle who died very suddenly.  I am throwing myself deep into my work and have been doing lots of planning and I am excited about all the wonderful things coming up in our classrooms.

 Let me start by saying that I love the book, Mix It Up .  It was most recently available in our Scholastic book order but you can also get it at Chapters and Woozles.  The thing that I love about this book is it really breaks down color for children in a very basic and fun terminology.  It talks about taking primary colors and and rubbing them together to make secondary colors.  All in an artful beautiful way.  One of our families gifted us with a copy and that was lovely.  I particularly like the board book as it is super sturdy with our young group.

Our Mix it Up Art Project

 This past week I read this book at circle to our children with the promise that we would do an art project together and make our own Mix it Up piece.  The following are picture of that project afternoon.  The children were super excited to mix color and experience the paint in a sensory way with their fingers.

 The end result, as you can see it incredible.  I love the way the acrylic paint stands out on the glossy paper we used.  I have a greater plan for these painting and I will share that in the next few months but for now, lets just appreciate how very beautiful they are!

 I have two more recommendations on books.  The Dot , another brilliant book.  It is about a girl named Vashti.  Vashti is struggling with drawing and so she just makes a dot on her paper.  Her art teacher says, "now sign it".  All great artists sign their work.  And so the story goes on and Vashti learns to make dots in all kinds of ways and discovers she is really good at drawing.  I really love Peter H. Reynolds and his writing.  He has a collection of books that are brilliant.  We have all of them and they are worth buying.

 I love Beautiful Oops also.  It is another brilliant book for inspiring all kinds of art with different materials.

Color Mixing Work 

This is our Color mixing independent work space.  We have had it out for two weeks and we are finished with it now.  We used a combination of food coloring and liquid water color paint in primary colors for making secondary colors.  The children have really enjoyed this fully.