Experience in the Classroom: Day 2

Disclaimer: I skipped day one because it was not very productive, but I touched on it in my last blog post. Aside from that, though, I am trying to make this a series of posts where I will reflect on my days in the classroom. 

So I'm just gonna jump right in to day 2. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I was expecting to have the kids in a math group with me for an hour, but because it was a crazy-hectic Friday, plans changed.

When I came in, the students were just beginning their art project that should have been finished by that time. However, the teacher insisted on finishing it before math time, so that's what we did.

I did some prep for the project while the kids were at recess. This included:

• tracing glue outlines (to be explained below)
• filling containers with water
• getting paintbrushes
• opening sets of watercolors
• tearing off paper towels for each table
• putting materials on the desk in pairs for each table

After that, I set up the iPad camera on the AppleTV so that the teacher could do an example for the students. The final product was supposed to turn out a little bit like this: 

The teacher basically prepped for this the day before by drawing outlines of pumpkins and leaves with white glue and leaving them out to dry. Then, we traced the lines while the kids were at break and recess to create the black outlines that you see in the example above. 

This project is similar to this one, except we added an additional level of contrast by outlining the lines of glue that we created. 

Ms. Kiefer explained and demonstrated how to properly use the watercolors and then described the objectives of the project. It was intended to teach students wet-on-wet painting techniques, color blending, and how to use space in an artwork. We also taught the students that they could only use colors that were touching on the watercolor palette such as red and orange or green and yellow so that we taught them the importance of using analogous colors. 

Though I didn't get to take a picture of the kids' final products during my time in the classroom, they all turned out really well! I was so proud of them and it looked like they had a TON of fun!!

-TLC