1st grade - Starry Night

Today we looked at an artwork by Vincent Van Gogh called The Starry Night and learned a little about Mr. Van Gogh's life. Make sure you tell your mom and dad all about what you learned! Moms and Dads, we learned about his life, not his death.

This is a quick reminder to try to stay up until just after dark tonight (it gets dark at about 8:00 p.m. right now) and go outside with your parents to look at your night sky! Look carefully at all the details you see because tomorrow we will be drawing our own night skies! Once the drawing is done, we will be using oil pastels to paint it in Mr. van Gogh's painting style!

1st grade - basic color theory

This week, the first grade will be introduced to their first lessons on color theory. We will be covering Primary colors, Secondary colors, and the Color Wheel.

Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. They are called Primary because they are the first colors; the most powerful colors. When combined in millions of different ways, they can make all the other colors that exist! Also, no other colors can combine to make them!

Secondary colors come second. They are created when two Primary colors are mixed in equal amounts. It is that equal amounts thing that gives them their special standing as Secondary colors. The Secondary colors are orange, green, and violet. Violet can also be called purple.

A Color Wheel is the way that artists organize the colors to show how they are related to each other.

2nd grade - the 12 color wheel

Last year, we learned that PRIMARY colors can be combined equally to make SECONDARY colors.

This year, we added TERTIARY as a vocabulary word.

TERTIARY = THIRD

There is a third layer of colors that is made when you combine a primary color equally with a secondary color that is next to it on the color wheel. Remember, the secondary color already has 2 layers in it, so when you add a primary color to it, you get 3 layers! When completed, a Tertiary color wheel has 12 colors.

In the picture above,
1=Primary
2=Secondary
3=Tertiary