2nd grade Warm/Cool Paintings

After learning our 12 colored color wheel, the second grade classes learned that some colors remind us of WARM things.  The warm colors are the reds, oranges, and yellows.  Other colors remind us of COOL things.  The cool colors are the greens, blues, and violets.

Next, we learned how to create a wet on wet watercolor wash.  The goal was to get the colors to swirl around on the paper before sinking in and drying, giving the page a swirly tie-dyed look.  To do this, first the paper is soaked, then the very wet watercolor is placed on it.  The colors swirl around and make interesting color blends and shapes.

After the warm and cool watercolor washes are dry, students look at the swirly shapes, looking for exciting things in the WARM colored paper, and calm things in the COOL colored paper.  It is a bit like looking for shapes in the clouds on a lazy summer afternoon.  Finally, the found images are drawn in using a black marker or crayon.

2nd grade Warm/Cool Paintings

The second grade classes spent some time learning about warm colors and cool colors, then painted one watercolor wash of each. After the paintings were dry, the students looked at the swirling colors using their imaginations in order to try to find exciting pictures in the warm painting, and calm pictures in the cool painting. The image above is my example of this project. As soon as they are finished, I will post collage images for each of the classes. If a student's painting is not shown, it is because it was either not finished in time for the photo shoot, or that student was absent for the project and/or photo shoot.

2nd grade - warm/cool colors

Now that we know all 12 colors of the elementary color wheel, it is time to organize them into warm and cool colors.

Warm colors are considered exciting and seem to jump out at us from the page.

Cool colors are considered calm and seem to recede (move back) on the page.

We can use what we know about warm and cool colors to choose the right colors to create the mood we want for our picture.

Thanksgiving Cut Paper Collage

The second grade classes spent this week building a cut paper collage depicting something they are thankful for.  The first picture is my teacher example, the following pictures are student work.

Teacher example...



 Student work!

Second Grade Seasonal Symbols

A symbol is a simple picture that represents an idea.  For instance, this simple picture...

... is the universal symbol for the idea of LOVE.  It can be very hard to draw a picture of love, but very easy to draw the symbol for it!  Also, no matter what language you speak, you can recognize the heart symbol and know that it stands for love.  That is the power of symbols.

In our second grade art class, we brainstormed simple images that could represent each of the four seasons, then drew out our symbols of the seasons!  Below are some student examples.