All through out the year, I give my students lots of opportunities for exploring concepts such as color mixing but along with the freedom to independently explore, I will often take the time to sit down with my students and walk through a concept. This lesson in color mixing is an example of such a time…
Anytime there is a process that I want to guide my students through, I find it best if I really think through what approach will work the best. Will it be better to add a dot of color on each circle graph or leave the graph blank? Will it be better to prepare the colors of paint ahead of time or invite the children to add their own colors? Will it be better to use one brush with a cup of water or lots of brushes and no water? Will my students find “Plan A” more interesting and easy to understand or should I go with “Plan B?” What kind of information do I really expect my students to walk away with and remember?..
As much as I think ahead, I almost always find that something doesn’t go as planned and so regardless of the plan I choose to go with, I know that it is important to remain flexible and not get too focused on the “lesson” but to instead stay focused on the purpose. Ultimately, the purpose in this lesson was to break down the process of color mixing and to open up discussion that promotes critical thinking and inquiry. We began by asking questions like “What do you think will happen if we mix red with blue ?” and then we searched for answers…
In this type of lesson, I guide my students through the steps to answer our questions. We began by painting red on one triangle then moved on to painting a second triangle with the yellow…
In my mind, each child would skip a space in the color wheel to paint the two colors but my first error in planning showed up right away. The children went off in different directions with the two colors. Some painted side-by-side, some painted with the yellow right on top of the red, and others skipped a space. Did that mean this lesson was a fail? As Pete the Cat might say say, “Goodness No!” Colors come and colors go – so we just kept on plugging along….
Our oldest students began to catch on to how to apply and mix the paint on the color wheel so that they would be able to see every color on their wheel where our youngest students got a little confused about the idea of spacing out their colors. But the lesson still was a success as the children worked to intentionally select two different colors and mix them together to make a third color…
And along the way, I realized that it was best for the children to use different paint brushes so that their colors would not get so muffed up on the brushes. So at the very last minute, we pulled out cotton swabs to use for mixing our colors…
I am sure you have had a lesson where the plan didn’t quite go as you had originally thought. Did you make an adjustment? Did you scrap the idea altogether? Want to tell me about it? Leave a comment below and we will continue this discussion…
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