Both Xander and Ava love to craft and create.
We have experienced art through books, museums, videos, galleries, and even kid's shows like the Little Einsteins.
These are wonderful Alphabet Art Cards from Baby Einstein - they both love these cards.
There are many wonderful sites to get inexpensive or free Montessori Artist 3 part cards - we have used some cards and may again in the future, but right now we are mainly using the iPad and computer to go through sites like this wonderful one.
We started Colour theory by first understanding colour itself - thus an introduction to Sir Isaac Newton's Prism.
This is a fantastic book that we will be working with later, but it was great to have it on hand for a moment such as this!
We tried a couple of great experiments with very basic supplies from around the house, but this was our most successful. We used a glass pie plate of shallow water placed over the edge of a table, and used a flash light to see the spectrum. Xander took the pictures.
We also watched the Light & Colour Episode from Bill Nye The Science Guy.
This is a fantastic short video about the elements of art that we really enjoyed.
I bought the Magic School Bus chapter book series, and Xander read Colour Day Relay.
This is a wonderful book, just packed with information about light and colour.
This is the book I chose to help plan our study, along with Pinterest.
I went to school for Visual & Creative Fine Art, but that feels like many moons ago and is not the direction I took. I enjoyed it and continue to love art, and all forms of hand crafts, but this book was a wonderful tool for me to get organized. It is aimed at a younger audience - perfect for my guys and many of the projects included I've seen floating around online. There are many things I will skip over, and use what works for us.
Once we are through the elements of Art, we are moving on to this book.
This book highlights periods and artists,chronologically throughout time. There are projects for each artist. Our first Artist from the book will be Giotto. I am thinking that I will tie this in with our History studies. Our History Manuals are from Montessori Research & Development, and we will also be using this series of World History books, among many others that I will get into in later posts.
This is another wonderful book, that we will get into later as well.
This is a Colour Matching Activity we made for Ava & Xander using paint chips dowels and plywood. It is based on this one. I originally was going to make a second set of wood holders, as in the original to hold the dowels and didn't get around to it. So really if I had to do it again, I would probably use wooden disks from a craft or dollar store for matching.
Xander collected objects of his choice, to fill in the wheel.
The colour wheel
The colour wheel I used was from the book above, Elements of Art, it can be found every where. I used Bristol board, and traced out the circles - only the primary are in colour - my choice.
We all painted a wheel together. We chatted about holding and proper cleaning of the brushes to start. Xander &Ava paint almost daily. They have a kitchen cupboard of paint supplies ready for creating - these are our first discussions with more detailed instruction.
Xander was very keen and loved this project. We chatted while we painted about each set of colours he was creating, secondary and tertiary colours.
Ava was mainly interested in the mixing part... boy did she mix a lot of paint!
The we took out our 3rd Montessori Colour box, and chatted about a few more combinations of colours.
He placed the primaries and secondaries on the wheel.
We talked about complementary colours, and he created the basic pairings. We looked at monochromatic colour schemes, and warm & cool colours.
Lastly we chatted about analogous colour schemes. This was plenty for now, and all schemes will be revisited through future projects.
This is an interactive colour wheel that he really liked. There are literally limitless art education resources online, it was such a pleasure.
The kids created portfolios for their work
I found this project online everywhere, that utilizes warm and cool schemes.
I thought I would show the basic and fairly inexpensive art supplies we are using for our early art education. We have as I mentioned, easy access paint and craft supplies. These supplies are set aside for these lessons and projects for now.
Large art pad for large projects.
Above are papers I found at the dollar store.
These paper are an economical option from Michael's Crafts.
The above acrylic paint set is from an art supply store. They were also a less expensive set.
I bought several things from the Artist's Loft Series from Michael's Crafts because the quality is great for what I was looking for and the price point was wonderful.
Lots of markers from the dollar store.
Pastels
Drawing pencils
Water Colour Pencils
Chalk Drawing & Sketching set
Water Colours. These have such wonderful depth of colour. We used the black to create ink for our Great Lessons - Story of Writing quill work, and it was awesome.
I chose these pallets.
Natural Camel Hair Brushes. These are inexpensive but great.
The canvas case was from a previous set I had. I am think I will make one for our pencil sets also.
We are excited and off to a good start!! In our next post,I will share a fun colour mixing project with Miss Ava.
Thanks for visiting with us!
Please visit and "like" us for updates on our
Facebook Page! We share photos and
updates of what we are up to there!
We love to hear from you!!
If you have any questions for us comment... ASK!!
Visit us on Pinterest as well!!
Don't forget to check out our Montessori
Subscribe to Making Montessori Ours to get all of our
latest updates by email & Subscribers FREE Printable List.
I sooo love this post!! We'll definitely be doing it this Spring! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you!!! Spring is such a wonderful time to study colour!!!!
DeleteWe're doing colour theme in our preschool science this year so this is very timely. Thanks for sharing (over from the hop)
ReplyDeleteThank you!! I have really enjoyed visiting your blog!! Looking forward to future posts!!
DeleteI love the idea of matching colors to the homemade color wheel! Not being art-trained at all, I tend to think of colors in linear order. Definitely going to go research how to incorporate some color theory into our homeschooling now. Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteThanks Aubrey!! There are endless resources out there that make it super easy, and fun:)
DeleteLove this post! Thank you for sharing it with the blog hop!
ReplyDeleteThanks Trish!!
Deleteloved the materials you use and the depth of learning you are going into when teaching!!! thank you for sharing!!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you Anastasia!!
DeleteI love all the wonderful ways you explored colors in this post.
ReplyDeleteThank you!! I love the interconnectedness of Montessori learning. This was a lot of fun:))
DeleteI can't wait for you to see how we turned an page a day art calendar into a cool learning activity! I feel like I need to go back through this little by little... you've got some great ideas!
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to it!!!!Thanks Leann:)
DeleteCan I just say, I LOVE this post! So many ideas! So many possibilities. I'm been trying to teach my oldest about the elements of art this year and feeling completely inadequate in my process. I LOVE how you went through everything here. You've definitely inspired me!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Renae!! We had such a great time playing with colour and there are many activities we have repeated. I will look forward to reading up on what you get up to!! Thanks again!!
Delete