Rainbow Prints in Preschool

 In this lesson with the preschool 4's, I introduced primary colors.  I started with painting a red bow on the white board and skipping a space and painting a yellow bow.  I mixed yellow and red together to create orange and added it to my rainbow.  I skipped another space and added the blue bow.  I mixed the yellow and blue on the board to create green.  I mixed the red and the blue to create a purple but it was not a true color.  I told them that the dark blue in the rainbow is called indigo and that the purple in the rainbow is really a violet.

I gave each of them a blue crayon and showed them how to make raindrops.  They also got a few cotton balls to pull apart to make clouds. While they worked on the raindrops and clouds, I called them one by one to my table.  I painted a rainbow on the table and we pressed their paper onto the rainbow to make a print.  It was a magic moment when we pulled each paper off of the table to see the newly printed rainbow.  I went around and gave each student some glue so they could glue their clouds onto their rainbows.

At the end of each lesson I ask each student to tell me something that we did during the lesson.  I love how art can introduce new vocabulary as well as give the students an opportunity to communicate.  My classes are 30 minutes long and I average about 12 four year old students in each session.

Materials:  paper 8 1/2 by 11
                  tempura paint
                  large paint brushes
                  blue crayons
                  cotton balls
                  glue