How do you teach color in the virtual world.

How do you teach color in the virtual world?  Color is best explained when you can mix paint.  However, when students are virtual, it is difficult to teach the concept of mixing the primary colors to make the secondary colors.  But it is possible.

It is the year of virtual or hybrid learning.

Are you a teacher or a parent during the 2020-2021 school year?  You know where I am going with this.  It is the year of virtual or hybrid learning.  I am sure you can relate if you are parent.  Being a teacher to my children has been difficult.  It put a different perspective spin on the homeschool parent.  As a teacher, I have found the whole situation to be a learning experience.  You know the words: What is meant for harm will be used for good.  I have a feeling these words depend on the person.  For me, I have found them in my life over and over.  This entire school year has it moments of stress and yet in the end it turns out great.

Why do you ask?

So as an art teacher this year, I decided to start with line.  Then move to geometric shapes.  I kept putting off color.  Why do you ask?  Especially when I totally like color.  Color is something that is much more exciting then line when getting the younger students started in art.  But I could not start with color.  Because the students were at home and not in the school art room, where I could provide them with all the needed supplies for their art success.  If you are an art teacher in the public-school system, you too know that we have no idea if students will have crayons or paint to develop their art.  I had students at the beginning that did not have paper or pencils.  It was sad.  Can you relate?

We must focus on color.

After moving students though line and geometric shapes, I realized that we must focus on color. How do you teach color in the virtual world? Especially, when you know most students do not have paint and possibly no crayons. Well you break it down even more. Take it slower.

Start with the primary colors.

Here is the first lesson that we completed.  As you probably know we start with the primary colors.  Mondrian is the given artist for a focus on primary colors.  However, I did not want to use the popular posts online.  I wanted to make up my own.  I wanted it to transition from the geometric shapes to the primary colors as well.  So, we drew buildings with some that were dancing the Boogie Woogie.  Now anyone knows that when teachers and adults that seem serious to children start using words like boogie that the children tend to become more engaged with their giggles.

Cute Owls

Next, we used our primary colors with some owl drawing.  It was a way to introduce the students to organic shapes and review all the lines.  Yes, they struggled with the using the primary colors for the cute owls.  But the emphasis and hands on doing led to the knowledge being stored.  So they may build on it.

Introduce the secondary colors.

After the owls, we moved into the Jim Dine hearts.  This lesson introduced the secondary colors.  I discussed them in prior post.  The link is here if you wish to go back and look at it.  They really enjoyed it.

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No paint this year.

Lastly, we looked at how the primary colors make the secondary colors.  How do you show this with crayon and not paint?  I was skeptical at first.  Yet, I moved forward with it.  Would the crayon blend enough for the students to see the secondary colors develop from the mixed primary colors?  And they did.  Oh My!  I heard repeatedly just like I would hear when we mix paint: “I see green.”, I got orange.” 

How do we teach color virtually and hybrid. Like we always do. We mix colors and start with the basic medium. Color will work its magic no matter the supplies used.