"Hey! But...Where's the BLUE?!"

Artwork Inspired by Sky Color by Peter H. Reynolds

 A fellow art teacher recommended the book Sky Color by Peter H. Reynolds and as soon as I read it, I thought of this project!  The story begins with a young artist in school whose class is painting a mural.  She decides to paint the sky portion but when she rummages through the paints there is no blue to be found!  

"How can we paint the sky with no blue paint!?"

* This is a question asked in the book itself, and at this point, I stop reading the book so students have the opportunity to solve this artistic challenge on their own!*

 

 This is the key question I posed to students in order to complete this project.  Now, of course we first reviewed our earlier unit on architecture and those famous examples found in our city.  Students first drew their cityscape in black crayon.  After finishing the architecture of their piece, students got watercolor palettes and were shocked to find that I had covered all the blue with tape so they could not use it!!  

Needless to say, they were able to use their creative minds and problem solve a solution.  Really, the end results featured here show you exactly how they solved this artistic challenge.  As students completed their work I finished the story so they could see how the main character Marisol solved this challenge.  Students were excited to see that they solved this challenge the same ways Marisol did and using the same colors!  They thought about the different times of day(just as she observed the sky at different times of the day) and were able to think of the night sky, sunrise, sunset, rainy days, sunny days, windy days, and much more!

I'd like to congratulate the awesome work by these first and second grade students!  They really impressed me with their artistic problem solving skills!