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5.10.2012

Hot and Cold Castles - Kindergarten

I am not sure when or how this lesson came to mind -- we did these a few months back, when it was suppose to be winter.  

The kinders and I looked at pictures of all different kinds of castels.  Their job during the slideshow was to look for different shapes!  We then went through each slide together to find all the shapes we could: square windows, rectangle windows, triangle windows -- triangle roofs, prisms (from one student), circles, arches!  You name it, they saw it -- they saw it in the buildings and the trees surrounding.
The first day we drew our castles with pencils - making sure to use a castle top line and all the shapes we saw!  I drew a couple of example castles to help them see how the shapes went together - then I quickly erased them so that no one would be tempted to copy!  Once the students drew their castels they outlined them with black oil pastel.

I honestly can't remember if we painted these the same day we drew them or not..... wow how long ago did we do these?!

In any case, we discussed hot and cold colors at some point - the kids helped me sort colors with some guided help.  I asked for examples of things they would color orange or yellow.  I get answers that range from  chicken to fire to sun to shoes.  I do my best to stir them towards the sun and fire to help them remember what is hot.  I then ask them what do they color 'blue' -- water, sky, pools, rain.... in most cases kids associate these will a cool feeling.

So, with some examples and guided direction the kids and I sort colors.

I then pass out water colors that are all cool and they can choose to paint either their castel OR their sky.  The next class we use hot colors and paint what they didn't pain before.  (I do them different days and only give them what they can use to help enforce hot and cold groupings.  In Kindergarten we do hot/cold cityscapes in which I give them then whole palate of watercolors and its' their job to use the correct colors in correct groupings.)

Overall the kids had a BLAST drawing these and painting them in.  I even had one student insist on using neutral colors. Ha!

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