les couleurs

We begin with the Alberta learning outcomes written in clear student friendly "I can" statements.  Students, parents and teachers can track and document learning throughout the unit.

The colour unit visual dictionary includes "foncé" and "pâle".  Even before we learn those terms students may use them in their journals.  One of the sentence structures we learn early on is "Voici + a noun, c'est + a colour".

Colour unit word strips.

Begin by giving students trays and pipettes and ask, how many different colours can you make from red, blue and yellow?  You don't need the cool Steve Spangler trays, you can use ice cube trays.  Pipettes, food colouring, and an open-ended question - what could be more fun?

The link will give you more details on how to proceed.

Let your grade 1 students paint the first week of school.  Get the paint pallets above for a dollar from the dollar store and quit being scared of paint.

This book is fun, self-explanatory.  Grab a visual dictionary, pick a colour, paint and print.  Don't make them colour.  We don't colour stuff.  This is about teaching the routine of using paints and learning the colours.  PAINT!

Hey look, a crayon colour mini book for our book boxes that grade 1 students can read.

Make this colour texture book.  Find things in the classroom and the playground to use for each colour.  

Red:  pompoms

Orange:  Orange PEZ candy wrappers

Yellow:  feather

Green:  yarn

Blue:  sequins

Purple:  ribbon

Gray:  tin foil

Brown:  bark mulch

Black:  rubber crumb

Use toothpicks, teach DABS of glue, not GOBS.  There, you've taught a painting and a gluing routine and it's only September.

Students who are able can write their own sentences, make their own book from blank pages or add pages and colours.

Don't have them colour the cover like I did, let them use PAINT!  Pop out only the primary colour pucks and have them mix on a plastic lid to get the other colours.  It will be messy.  The pucks can be rinsed off (this is the cover of the texture book).  Oh look, another I can read for for our book boxes.

1.  By large paper on sale at Michaels' really big and maybe cut it.  These were .40 each, not easy to find.

2.  Tape the sides to your art boards with painters tape (have a parent volunteer do this for you).  Gail at www.thatartistwoman.org will explain how to make art boards.

3.  Trace with pencil those card boards shapes you can find at Michael's, keep it simple.

4.  Demonstrate how to overlap and then erase the lines behind (this is tough for gr. 1, go around and model).

5.  Talk about having things face different directions, go off the edge, overlap (oh look, elements and principles of design!!).

6.  Trace with Sharpies (I know, sharpies, in grade 1, cray-zay).

7.  Give each pair pf students 2 primary colours.  They paint INSIDE their designs with both colours.  Only once BOTH are finished they mix up their paint and paint the back ground the resulting SECONDARY colour.

8.  Once dry peel back the tape, check out that beautiful crisp white border.  Post them in the library.  Gorgeous.  Make sure you plaster the wall with the science outcome:  We mixed primary colours to make secondary colours.

Read some of these books.  They're simple, easy to understand for K and 1 French Immersion.  There may be some animations on YouTube or Vimeo.  Check my Pinterest board for updates.

Read this one.  Then make your own Mouse Paint Book.  Watch and listen to the animation on YouTube.

Template for your own Mouse Paint Book. (note there has been a correction made to this file, the book should read "la souris" not "le" as in the following photo)

Learn about the difference between manufactured and natural materials (these are Alberta outcomes) with a manufactured and natural colour book.  I use the Edmonton Public Science resources.  They are available in both French and English and have great hands on science lessons.  I won't post it all here.  There is a simple version and one with longer sentences

For this booklet we covered the natural item with tissue and the manufactured is coloured.  It was also a review of the school vocabulary we learned early in September.

A fall book of colours, focusing on spelling, letter formation (les giraffes, les coccinelles, les singes).

Read Petit Bleu and Petit Jaune.  I love this sweet story.  Give students pieces of playdough in primary colours, let them smush them together to make secondary colours.  Here's the story and video animation on Vimeo.

Let students choose a paint chip.  Have them practice making tints (add white) and shades (add black) of a colour.  The goal is to match your paint chip.  Encourage students to use the guess and check strategy, just like in problem solving in math.

This document has some other experiments and activities we did.  Some are worksheet-ish.  They were accompanied by experiments,  sometimes we put the learning on paper, other times we didn't.  Click to download and have a look.  We  dyed cotton using beets, split the stems of celery and carnations and left in food colouring etc.  We also experimented with the concept of transparent and opaque colours.

Our collaborative class book this month was based on a book in the library and now I can't remember what it was . . . here is the format (there is a page for every colour).  Each student completes a page, we bind them together and add them to the class library.

Our kindergarten colour class book was simpler, we coloured and painted balloons and glued on a string.  Bound and in the class library it's a favourite in September.  I add a photo of each student as we get to know each other and learn names.

This was an ice cream cone colour project we made in Kindergarten, maybe too young for grade 1.  They could make their own labels?

To find more great stuff, links, videos, books for this unit go to my Pinterest Board.  If you're not on Pinterest and need an invite e-mail me and I will make it happen.  shannonwiebe@hotmail.com