Giving Color to our Villains and Ourselves

So this week Kim and I tackled paint with our students.  The lesson was to use the drawings they made a few weeks ago and paint the clay sculptures that we made last week.  Kim began by sitting the kids in a circle on the carpet.  She then talked about using paint first asking if the students had used paint before.  All the students said yes, but the two of us gathered as the lesson went on that might not have been the case for everyone, or their use of paint had been minimal up to this point.  Then Kim proceeded to talk about color mixing.  She would ask which two colors do you need to combine to create __________.  The students would then raise their hand, Kim would call on them hear their answer and if they were correct they got to come up and demonstrate the mixing and put the color on a piece of paper. 

After the demo the students returned to their seats and we called them over in small groups to get their paint palates.  We asked them to consider the colors that they would need to paint their villain and their sample painting.  Our color selection was limited which is why we had the students learn about mixing colors.  Yet they would come up to the table asking for colors we didn't have and then proceed to ask which colors they would need to mix.  It makes me wonder if they really were paying attention, some of them were. It took a really long time to pass out the paints because we were asking each individual student which colors they would need.  If we were to do paint again since we were only giving them a little paint since their sculptures weren't very large I would have probably had the paints already poured.

After getting their paints they were to work on color mixing and using water to loosen the paint and then paint on a practice piece of paper.  After everyone had paint we handed out the sculptures and the kids began painting.  A lot of the kids ended up wearing more of the paint then made it on their paper or sculptures I'm pretty sure.  We should have warned the parents to send their kid in clothes that could get dirty, hopefully none of them hate us too much.  But the kids all seemed to really enjoy the painting and their sculptures turned out really well.  I'd say of all the lessons the students really took their time on this one.  Normally a lot of them rush through.  But with painting they all made sure they had the right colors and were careful about their painting which was nice to see.

Some of the sculptures had pieces that were not securely attached that we will be gluing next week.  But in painting some of the pieces were quite delicate to begin with a fell apart.  We will also have to fix those.  I think if we were to work with clay again a more in depth demonstration about connecting piece would definitely be necessary.  But its ok it seems like they will be easy enough to fix.
I think both Kim and I were glad that we tackled a painting project before we got to student teaching.  Not only did we get some really good outcomes from the students but it was also worthwhile to see just how much goes into a project of this nature with kids of this age.  I'm not so sure if painting will be at the top of my list for lessons I want to complete in student teaching but this lesson was a definite learning experience for the both of us!