Wednesday, December 17, 2014

2nd Grade Neutral Colors

As part of the new 2nd grade art curriculum neutral colors are to be taught.  OH MY GOSH was I dreading it.  I'm the type of person that does not believe in wearing black or white...it's just not my color, a little too snoozey for me. I take that back-- I have 3 things that are associated with black or white only because I'm a San Antonio Spurs fan and when I was a small child I picked the NBA team with the worst colors in the league.  If you were to look at my closet, classroom, bedroom (anything that I'm in control of) your eyes might start to hurt because of all the color, and I'm no even mad about it.  Color is like my favorite thing.  It's awesome. It makes me happy.

But UGHH neutral colors really???!! How was I supposed to get 2nd graders excited about only using neutral colors If I wasn't even excited?  I searched the interwebs looking, no seeking, answers hoping one would just jump out at me from my computer.  Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.  As I was sitting in my classroom (about ready to pull my hair out) I got it--ICE CREAM. 

The best part of this lesson was talking about the neutral colors and how they make you feel.  One 2nd grade boy said they made him feel "depressed" (I'm right there with you bro.)  But then when I tell them GUESS WHAT, we're only doing a project with the neutral colors...you can see the anger in their eyes.  It all becomes right in the world when I show my example and they get excited to make ice cream!  

So I present to you our super scrumptious, awesome vanilla, chocolate, and twist ice cream cones only using the neutral colors (with a hint of red sparkly cherry, because what kind of person would I be if I didn't allow 2nd graders to add that dazzling detail?)  To make the awesome patterned background we used these, they are seriously the greatest.





Now that we've made you hungry go get yourself some ice cream.

3 comments:

  1. Hello! What steps did you take to create these beautiful ice cream cones?? I did an ice cream project with my 1st graders a few years back & it was terrible, and these turned out so nice! How did you introduce it?? Thank you!

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    1. On the first day of the lesson we painted the background with black paint and texture tools, then used the silver patterns to go over top. After that each student got 3 pieces of paper (roughly 5 by 7 inches) and we drew three ice cream cones all together. We started with the cone and worked our way up--I asked students to fill the entire page. To make the ice cream look like it's swirling around I asked the students to think about drawing side ways raindrops all the way to the top until they could make a curvy triangle.
      On the 2nd day of the lesson we used oil pastels to fill in the ice cream cones. I tried to break it down into what neutral colors could be used for each flavor:
      Vanilla- White & Yellow-Orange (Crayola) or the Pentel Yellow Ochre color
      Twist- Brown & White
      Chocolate- Brown & Black
      With this step students were really to blend and overlap the colors.
      All together this lesson took most classes about 2 and a half 50 minutes classes to finish. Some painted the cones used a brown and white paint mixture, or if they did not have time for that they just overlapped brown, white, and yellow ochre for the cone. The final steps were to add lines on the cone, sprinkles, and the cherry on top using red glitter mixed into liquitex clear gloss medium.

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  2. Wow I didn't even see the above nomination! Haha
    You've been nominated AGAIN for the Liebster award!
    http://www.artwithmsgram.com/2015/01/goodbye-winter-break-hello-liebster.html

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