tints and shades...

Third grade gets hit hard with color families and learning about color value in our school's outcomes. There are so many awesome projects to teach these outcomes that I usually try something different each year. Although, there are those projects that are my favorite that I keep going back to. This is one of them.

We discuss and look at cityscapes as well as talk about the horizon line. The students choose one of the primary or secondary colors to use for there cityscape. Before they actually paint on their drawn out cityscape, I have them experiment with values. Some students are surprised to see the changes the white or the black paint makes.

Obviously, I have the students mix their values one at a time and paint the building one at a time. One pet peeve I have is the rinsing of the brushes in water then directly putting the paint brush into tempera paint to get more. I ALWAYS remind my students to have a paper towel next to them to dry off their brushes BEFORE they put them back into the paints. Tempera paint should be opaque, thick and velvety, not transparent and runny. :)

Once the painting is finished, students use black Sharpies to trace around the building to clean them up and I give them the option of adding a few windows.
Enjoy!