Colour Theory with Juggling Clowns!

Clowns creep me out- always have. However, I find children's drawings of clowns delightful!

So this is a little colour theory lesson to help my Grade 1 students remember their secondary colours.

I show them some ways to draw a simple clown- we talk about simple shapes and patterns they might use. They draw these in pencil, colour in with markers and outline with a black marker.

Then we move on to the 'balls'. (I literally had to say the word 'balls' about 50 times during this project: "Cut our your balls carefully! Don't lose you balls! Keep your balls in a pile after you cut them out! Did someone lose a ball? I found one on the floor! OK, glue on your balls now!")  hahaha!

I traced a small vitamin lid 6 times in a row- then photocopied this a bunch of times so I had one strip per student. (there was probably an easier way to do this in Word but oh well...) 

We reviewed colour mixing and how to get secondary colours. You could have student paint these with tempera or watercolour. But I was on a time crunch, so we used oil pastels.

Then the balls get cut out and glued onto the clown paper. This took about 2- 40 minute periods for all students to complete. This project is also a great lesson in practising their cutting skills, as the circles were somewhat small and tricky for some to cut out.

Grade 1 results!