Kindergarten Artists read the book "
Mouse Paint" by Ellen Walsh. In this fun book, three white mice find three jars of paint. One jar is red, one is yellow and one blue. Thinking the paint is "mouse paint," they each jump in one jar. When they climb out and walk around they drip paint in puddles on the floor.
The yellow mouse steps in a red puddle and makes...ORANGE!
The blue mouse steps in a yellow puddle and makes... GREEN!
The red mouse steps in a blue puddle and makes... PURPLE!
We drew three white mice and used primary paint colors to paint the mice.
We then had our mice do exactly as the mice in the book did and we mixed secondary colors using the primary colors.
First grade artists studied the difference between lines and shapes. We read Shel Silverstein's "The Missing Piece." We learned that lines are "open". They start and they stop. Lines are used to make shapes. Shapes are "closed". We all chose one letter and we drew that letter repeatedly on our papers. As we drew we discussed variety. We created our letter in a variety sizes, while changing our paper orientation from vertical to horizontal again and again. Eventually the letters that we drew repeatedly filled our papers with shapes. Inside each shape we created a different pattern. We used markers and watercolors to then create patterns using our colors. 
