Summary
Art and music activities help students express and understand their feelings.
Materials
Color Explorations
- Mouse Paint
- Cookies
- Frosting
- Food coloring
- Plate or napkins
- Paint
- Crayons
- Paper
- Mouse
- Chart (class graph)
- Mouse Graph
- Ink pad
- Greeting cards
- Blank white cardstock
- Color Wheel
Moody Music
- Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"
- Paper
- Crayons
- Pencils
- Index cards
- Class graph8
Additional Resources
Books
Mouse Paint, by Ellen Stohl Walsh; ISBN 0152002650
Hailstones and Halibut Bones, by Mary O'Neill; ISBN 0385410786
Background for Teachers
Mouse Paint by Ellen Stohl Walsh is a book about mixing the
primary colors to make secondary colors. Your students should be very
familiar with the primary colors and have had opportunities to use a
variety of colors in works of art. As a teacher, you need to be familiar
with a variety of works of art, how the colors were used, and what
emotions the artist invokes by using those colors.
Students need to be exposed to a variety of music genres. Many
classical pieces have been composed to portray a certain message and
Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" is a good example of this. His music depicts
the four seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Before teaching
this lesson, teachers should be familiar with Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"
and be able to point out the parts of the music that match each season.
Teachers should also have available other music pieces they can teach
their classes to sing or just listen to.
Intended Learning Outcomes
1. Communicate clearly in oral, artistic, written, and nonverbal form.
Instructional Procedures
Invitation to Learn
Read the story Mouse Paint by Ellen Stohl Walsh. As you read the
story, have students mix the primary colors to discover what color they
will make, previous to reading the page in the book. For example, as
the red mouse plays in the yellow puddle, stop and have students mix
those two colors and see what they discover. After they mix the colors,
continue on reading the story. To mix the colors, you could have them
use paint, crayons, clay or even frosting on cookies. If you choose to
use the frosting and cookies (vanilla wafer style), the students start
with three tubs of white frosting at their tables. When they meet the
three mice in the story, you go and put food coloring in the frosting to
make it red, yellow, and blue. They then frost three cookies, one red,
one yellow, and one blue. As you get to the parts where the mice mix
the colors, add new food coloring to the frosting and have the students
mix it and see what color it becomes. They then frost three more
cookies, and by the end of the story they have six cookies one red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
Instructional Procedures
Color Explorations
- Discuss with your class what happened in the story and what
colors were mixed to make new colors. Display on the board all
the colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. They can be
displayed using squares of paper with the color words written
on them.
- Using the Mouse worksheet that has been copied in the six
colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple), have
students pick their favorite color of mouse and cut it out.
Have students graph their mouse on a big class graph made of
butcher paper or a pocket chart. The graph should be labeled
with the colors on the bottom so students know where to place
their mice. Once everyone is done, look at it as a class and
discuss what they notice or what information they can gather,
such as which color has the most, which color has the least, etc.
- Students will make their own representation of the graph from
the class graph. Using the Mouse Graph worksheet, have your
students mark the boxes for each color. Students could make
mouse thumbprints by making a thumb print and then decorate
it like a mouse. Once they are done, have them compare it to
the class graph to see if it is the same.
- Discuss with the class how different colors can make us feel
different ways. Show your students some greeting cards and
talk about what colors were used to decorate the card and
what message the artist is trying to portray. Play a game using
the cards where you show the front of the card and have the
students guess what the message is on the inside.
- Give students blank cards, have them decorate them and write
their message on the inside. They can then share them with
their neighbors and see if they can guess what message is inside.
Moody Music
- Discuss with your class how music is composed to portray a
certain message and makes us feel certain moods or feelings.
- Introduce your students to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." Discuss
how the music was written to make listeners feel and imagine
what each season is like.
- Play one of the seasons and have students draw pictures of
that season. Remind them to think of what activities they
participate in during the seasons.
- On the back of their paper, have students write about their
season and then share it with others.
- Repeat this activity with all the seasons, creating a season book.
Each child will have created four pages and it is then put into a
book. They will each have their own book that they can share
with others.
- Students can pick their favorite season. Give them each a 3x5
card and have them draw their favorite thing that reminds
them of the season and then place it on a graph that the whole
class can see. The graph can be made out of butcher paper or a
pocket chart that is labeled with all the seasons at the bottom.
As a class, compare and contrast it.
Extensions
Curriculum Extensions/Adaptations/
Integration
Family Connections
- Assign students to make a color collage at home. Have them
pick their favorite color and then find pictures in magazines or draw
things that are that color. Have them bring them to class and share
them.
- Have students ask their family members what their favorite
color is and make a graph using the Mouse Graph worksheet.
- Teach students songs at school, send the words home with them
and have them share the songs with their family.
- Ask students to ask their family what season is their favorite,
have them make a graph and bring it back to school to share.
Assessment Plan
- Give students the Color Wheel worksheet. Have them color in
the wheel. Guide them on coloring in the red, yellow, and blue
space, and then let them do the rest on their own. Observe to
see if they recognize which colors mixed together to make the
new colors.
- Play one of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and have the students
identify which season it is.
- Create a graph of the class' favorite colors, using the data that
you collected from graphing their colored mice in the Mouse
Paint lesson. Have them read the graph and answer questions
such as: which color has the most, which color has the least,
etc.
Bibliography
Research Basis
Berkeley, S.L., Mastropieri, M.A., & Scruggs, T.E. (2007). Peers helping peers. Educational
Leadership. 64(5) 54-58.
In this article, the authors discuss the benefits of teachers using
cooperative learning in their classroom. We all have students in our
class that come from a variety of academic levels. By using cooperative
learning, we can model the strengths of students to others in the
classroom. As they work together, they learn from each other and also
learn to work together.
Kendall, J.S., DeFrees, K., Pierce, J., Richardson, A., & Williams, J. (2002). Connecting ideas:
a strategy for extending the curriculum. ERIC Source. Retrieved January 20, 2008, from
http://www.eric.ed.gov.
This article talks about the importance of using connections when
teaching students. They talk about how there is not enough time to
teach them everything new, so we must find what they already know
and build from there. We have to take what is essential to be taught
and connect it with something else, so that we can fit it all in.