Color Recipe Books

In Second Grade the students are currently working on poetry in literacy and writing clear equations when working on math problems.  As way to connect them... in the Art Studio we are making Color Recipe Books! 
It is insanely fun!

We began by exploring paint for two classes.  For those two classes the students worked on one large painting with the goal to fill the entire space, and mix at least five invented colors.  The paintings were quite beautiful.

Next, we talked about all the beautiful colors they mixed, and how it can be difficult to remember how you made a certain color.  We decided to make a recipe book with all the colors we love, so we will always know how to make them, and can share the recipes with our friends.

They needed to create three parts to each recipe.
1. A shape where the color would be painted.
2. A clear recipe equation with words that helped us remember how much of each color we used.  For example, a big spoonful of yellow+ a little dab of red + a medium dab of white=
3. A juicy descriptive name for their color. (When writing poetry, they look for juicy words to make a poem more interesting.  And that is what we did with our colors!)  There can be many kinds of orange, but the orange I made is Juicy Peach.

It took four classes to finish their book, including the title page.

I could not have been happier with the results!  The kids had a amazing time!  They did not want this project to end.  "I want to mix colors all day!" Yes, I heard this many times. And I can totally relate ;)