One block, two blocks

red blocks, blue blocks

As usual, we began this lesson with a picture storybook: Mouse Paint.  As the mice dipped and danced into paint, we, too, mixed primary colors into secondary colors, discovering green, orange, and purple. 


On the shelf, the children have the opportunity to do the same, using acrylics to create their own color wheels.

Our Finished Work Files are growing fat with work--a sign of a productive classroom, but it's time to address the mess.  We need beautiful Take-Home Envelopes with which to shepherd home some of our work.  This year, we examined images of some of Piet Mondrian's work with primary colors.  Since then, we've been up to our elbows in acrylic paint. 



We began by coating manilla envelopes in black paint. 



Each child approaches this task in a different way.  Some start at one end and work toward the other.

Others start in the middle and then do the edges. 












After the black paint dried, the children arranged strips of masking tape to create quadrilaterals. 

Before applying the tape, we pressed each strip onto our clothing to prevent it from being so sticky that paint is removed when we pull off the tape.











Supplies Note:

Visits to four local stores, including Office Depot, Home Depot, Office Max, and Walgreens, yielded zero rolls of skinny masking tape.  Narrow-width masking tape can be purchased on-line.  Unless you can recruit a brave parent volunteer--as I did--to engage in somewhat questionable tape surgery, you may wish to order in advance.

Next, each block was filled with a palette of red, yellow, blue, or white.  It is always a treat to watch children’s art unfold--and to see how unique their artwork became, despite the constraints of using primary-colored rectangles on a grid of black lines.  Piet Mondrian similarly challenged himself as an artist, eliminating “non-essentials” and focusing his work on the “basic forms of beauty.” 

Some of our color blocks required repeated coats of paint in order to make them opaque, inviting lessons on opaque and translucent colors. 

It was great fun to watch the children peel the tape from their artwork to reveal the stark contrast between black lines and bold blocks of color!   




More of Piet Mondrian's work
Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray (1921)
Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue







There's a Book for That!
Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh