Painting
Painting is about translating ideas into shape, line, and color. Through experimentation and practice, students learn to mix all the colors they need to use for their painting ideas. Given a palette of red, yellow, blue, black, and white paint, students learn that there is an infinite variety of colors available to them. Colors can be light or dark, and more or less intense. Lines can be thick, thin, wiggly, straight, curved or sharp. Shapes can be big, small, round, angular, overlapping, touching, or far apart. As they mature and become more competent using paint, students also learn how to incorporate texture into their paintings, by varying their brush strokes and the thickness of the paint. The challenge for students is to figure out their own ways to combine all of these possibilities in their paintings.
We reference Experience and Art: Teaching Children to Paint, by Nancy Smith, throughout the painting strand.
Kindergarten
Animals
- What color will you need for your animal?
- What shape will you make for the biggest part?
- What shapes will you need for the connecting parts?
- What inside shapes will you need to make?
- Which brush will you use for each part?
- Where might your animal live?
1st Grade
Snow Play- Narrative
- What do you like to do in the snow?
- How does your body move?
- Where will the snow be?
- Will you include more than one activity?
Telling a visual Story- ELA Integration
- What is the main idea of your story? What part are you going to paint?
- Where does it take place? What details will you include to show the setting?
- Who is in the story? How will you show what are they doing?
- What other details can you add to help the viewer understand?
2nd Grade
Portrait Painting
Read The Color of Us by Karen Katz
- What color will you need to make for your partner's skin?
- What is the biggest shape you will need to make? What inside shapes do you see?
- How can you alter or change the skin color to show the nose?
- What is special about your partner?
Birds Eye Point of View Painting
To coordinate with the 2nd grade study of maps, students are introduced to bird's eye point of view.
- What is point of view?
- How would a bird see the world?
- What would objects look like from above?
- What colors do you need to make?
3rd Grade
Size Relationship Painting
We read the story You and Me Together, which describes special moments between parents and children from around the world.
- What is something you do with your mom or your dad?
- What colors do you need to make for yourself? For your parent?
- How big will you make yourself?
- How big will you make your parent?
- How close together or far apart are you?
- Where does it take place?
Texture/ Markmaking Painting
- What kinds of weather do we see during a storm?
- What kinds of colors do we need to make?
- What do you need to add to colors to make them dark or gloomy?
- How will you use your brush to create movement and texture?
Self Portrait
- What color will you need to make for your skin?
- What is the biggest shape you will need to make? What inside shapes do you see?
- How can you alter or change the skin color to show the nose?
Figure/Ground
- Where do wild animals live?
- What colors do you need to mix for your animal?
- How big will your animal be in your painting?
- Will you paint the animal or its habitat first?
Size Relationship Painting
Students look at the book Lizard In The Sun by Joanne Ryder.
- What is proportion?
- How big is a lizard next to doifferent objects?
- If you where as small as a bug, what would the world look like to you?
4th Grade
Monochromatic Painting
- What colors do you need to make green?
- Is there only one kind green?
- How can you make other kinds of green?
- What will happen if you add white? black?
Landscape Paintings
- What is the point of view in your landscape?
- Is it a close-up or a far-away view?
- Are you showing a small space or a big space?
- Is it a place that you have seen, or is it imaginary?
- hat is the season?
- hat time of day is it?
- What kinds of colors and textures will you use in your painting?
Figure/Ground
- What are ways you help, at home, at school or in another setting?
- What colors will you need to mix for yourself?
- What shapes will you need to show you are bending and moving?
- What will you add for a background to show where you are?
Figure relationship
- What is an activity you do with friends?
- Who will be with you?
- Where will you be?
- Where will each person be and how will they be moving?
- What colors will you need to make?
5th Grade
Gesture/Body Movement, Composition
- What is something you can do now that you couldn't do in kindergarten?
- What colors will you need to make?
- How will your body be moving?
- What details will support your idea?
Texture Painting
- What part of your image will you build up with paper mache?
- What parts will be higher or lower relief?
- How can you create different textures with the paper mache?
- What colors do you need to mix?
- How will you make textures with your brush?
Repetition
- What is repetition?
- What objects repeat in nature or the world?
- How can we get the same shape repeated over and over?
- What parts of your picture will you paint?
- What parts of your picture will you stamp?