Pumpkins at Night

As a follow up to the color wheel lesson, we pulled out the paints for some primary color mixing for an autumn themed drawing and painting lesson (inspired by DeepSpaceSparkle's Sparkle Pumpkin blog) We started with a reading of The Littlest Pumpkin by R.A. Herman. Many of the children had read this story at home or in their regular classroom but we read it with a focus on the shapes of the pumpkins. We compared and contrasted the colors and shapes of some real pumpkins in class and began drawing after a quick lesson in creating a more life-like shape.

Time for Painting
The kids were given only yellow and red watercolors to learn to mix orange and its various shades and hues. We also discussed painting by following the direction of the shape to help with the realistic curvature of the subject. Some of the children were ready to move on so they were given a blue pod and encouraged to make green and add leaves to their pumpkin.

We completed the paintings by cutting them out and pasting onto black construction paper. Then we added the night with sparkling stars, moons, owls, etc. For students, who were wanting to discover another medium, I pulled out the fall colored fabrics for them to create fabric leaves for our pumpkins to rest upon.
I think the first graders did a wonderful job and this was their very first time painting in art class at school!!