June Colors: Summer Art Lessons 2012 Begin!

My Interactive Color Wheel!

It's been a year since I officially resigned my full time teaching post and concentrated on staying home with the X-man and pursuing my own fine art projects. However, it is June and summer, so I am putting the "teaching" hat back on and encouraging creativity to a few future Picassos of the world.

Today was the start of the first session. I have four students - A 6 year old, 7 year old, 8 year old and 10 year old!

We were creative today, but probably less so than usual, because i wanted to get right in to the "Science" behind colors and introduce the color wheel. The students had the opportunity to see how the Primary Colors (Red, Yellow and Blue) mix into the three Secondary Colors (Green, Purple, and Orange). I had my own "Interactive" homemade color wheel (above left and below), and I also had Mikelle make a color wheel ahead of time.

Primary Colors

Mikelle's Color Wheel

My Interactive Color Wheel before the Secondary Colors are added.

Then, like Mikelle did, the students completed their own Color Wheel. They were to include the Primaries and Secondaries in the correct order, and also have the colors labeled.I had a lot of colored paper out and was hoping some of them would take the collage approach, but they pretty much favored straight drawing with the markers. That's okay. It was their color wheel, so they were able to use the medium of choice.

And the finished products!

And then...EDIBLE Color Wheels!

Why stop at simple colored paper and markers when you can make a color wheel you can eat? Plus, it gives the students an opportunity to mix the colors again. 

We began with the primary colors with frosting (courtesy of white frosting with food coloring):

And then we mix the secondary colors and frost them over vanilla wafers! Messy? Yes. Fun? Yes. Yummy? YES!

Finished Edible Color Wheels - and Christian was even here at the end and he also made one.

I am grateful that the "edible color wheel" project is over though. Not because of the mess, but because it's a real diet buster. Cookies and frosting are a BIG problem for me. Well, carbs and sugar in general are.... 

ANYWAY...it was a great kick-off to summer art! More to come!