Mixing colors, making worlds...

SO, today I realized that perhaps my Kinder are a little too close to riding the train straight to "Type-A" personality-ville. I mean, I love them, but maybe several of them would be Alex P. Keaton's best friend if they met him.
In art today, our project was to draw/paint your fantasy world. To help them understand and plan out their picture, we did some brainstorming:


These are their ideas. Really. Maybe I suggested the unicorn.
They are evidently really in love with modes of transportation, as noted by
the presence of a "train" and "mini-train" in fantasy world.


What made today's art really special is that I let them paint, which I almost never do. But they get really excited when they realize that paint and crayons don't mix, so those projects always bring like 500 twinkles to their eyes.



Almost every painting contained a train. This is Cindy's.
She got really exited about making that yellow-grayish color...but
then got tired of painting.

I think I enjoyed watching them paint as much as they enjoyed painting. I couldn't really find a good paint set, so their color palates were kind of limited, but they got so excited as they mixed cobalt blue and dark blue and golden-yellow and so on. When they figured out that white and blue make "sky blue," it was like Santa just walked into the classroom. Little synapsis firing all over the place!



This is Anthony's. What I love about Anthony is the way the world must
look to him. Sometimes he's quiet, but you know there's always more
going on. For instance, at first he was really proud of drawing a KTX (think
Korean AMTRAK) train. Then he throws in some dragons, just for good measure.

 
One of my favorite parts of watching my students paint was their favorite part. Their favorite part was not painting the picture, it was the way the paint mixed and swirled in their water trays. Seriously, it was like a whole new world was opening up to them. I guess some of the paint tubes were different types of paint, so when they put them on their brushes and then put their brush in water, they would get these wonderful swirls and layers. They were shouting across the room to each other, like, look at what it's doing now! And then they would add in another color and again their eyes would light up. It was amazing just to stand back and watch them discover so much in an action that seems so little.

This is Ethan's. He clearly pointed out the 3 objects in his painting to me.
Several times. There is a house. The blue creature at the bottom is a unicorn.
The red flying creature is a dragon. Ever since Paren'ts Day, back in the fall,
Ethan has been overly concerned with doing a fantastic job. So he always
makes sure to point everything out 3~5 times, just so I'm aware of well he is doing.

It was also great to watch them mix colors. Everytime they made a new color, it was broadcasted across the room. "Hey! We made gray!" Then another table would be like, "How did you do that?" And back and forth. It was like a half hour of gleeful shouts of "SKY BLUE!" and "BROWN!" and sometimes just truly joyful giggles when they ended up with blue-green or something in between.

This is Steve's. He had a very nice beach going until he discovered
how to make gray. Again, notice the recurring theme of trains and dragons.

This is Cathy's. Cathy is a very small girl with a big mind and (sometimes) shrill voice.
Today, though, she was totally engrossed in her fantasy world. She worked very concen-
tratedly on her rollercoasters and rides. I think her pictures has an almost Dali-esque quality to it.

When we brainstormed, I was a little concerned that the kiddos weren't thinking "creatively" enough...but then again, who's to say what is creative and what's not. We automatically classify unicorns as being creative, but trains as being normal. My kids had a lot of fun today, and were totally elated by the ability to make and mix colors. Today was their chance to put a little bit of their minds onto paper, and I am so thankful *as always* that I had the chance to see into their little, fantastic worlds.