1st Grade Warm Suns & Cold Moons

First grade students have been working with the warm and cold color families for the past two sessions. We brainstormed different things these colors reminded us of: the warm colors red, orange and yellow reminded us of things like sunshine, fire, and hot lava. The cold colors blue, green and purple (although purple can technically be either warm or cold, they tell me) reminded us of water, cloudy skies and blueberries.

Each student chose whether to create an artwork with warm or with cold colors; behold some of this year's Warm Suns and Cool Moons!

1st Grade Warm Suns & Cool Moons

Okay, these have been finished for a while already. As in... this may in fact have been one of the first projects we did this school year... but they finally made it into the bulletin board rotation about a month ago and I snapped some photos as I took the display down.

I thought that the first graders were especially expressive this year with the faces drawn on celestial bodies! After discussing the difference between warm and cold colors, students chose to portray either warm (sun) or cold (moon). We discussed facial expressions and different kinds of lines that could make our drawings interesting. Pencil drawings were traced in permanent marker then colored with crayon and resist-painted with tempera pucks. The product was well-worth a chuckle of endearment or two; more than one "cyclops moon" was spotted!